The Legacy of "We've always done it this way" part of Dilemmas
Joe recently completed his PhD and has landed a tenure track faculty position in the geology department at "Research U" for the fall semester. Joe will be teaching a large introduction to physical geology course in the spring. Research U has a variety of resources to help Joe develop his course and integrate the "affective domain," active learning, "clickers," etc. into his teaching. However, the department has a strong emphasis on research and views innovative teaching as not a priority. While in graduate school, Joe TAed both lower level introductory lectures and an upper level lab class, but received no formal training in teaching and was encouraged by his research advisor "just get by teaching."

Al's bandwagon part of Dilemmas
In the eight person seminar class is an inquisitive, nontraditional, student who is a motivated popular science reader. This student challenges the conclusions made by the vocal majority of scientists that global warming is caused by human activity.

Field Trip Anxiety part of Dilemmas
A few years into teaching my physical geology course, I made a bold move and added an all-day, mandatory field trip to the course. With 120 students in the course, orchestrating this field trip was neither an easy nor inexpensive task. I used the field trip as a major milestone of the course, talking it up for weeks beforehand, and structuring the lectures, labs and homework assignments to lead up to the Big Day. I am usually a pretty enthusiastic teacher, and my own excitement for the upcoming field trip was enough to make most of the students roll their eyes.

Karl the Tree Hugger part of Dilemmas
Karl has been assigned to you as an advisee, and you have never met him and have no information on him other than what the registrar shares. He is obviously smart (he received a "5" on the AP Environmental Science exam). He has made an appointment with you to discuss a program of study.

Age of the earth and relationship to belief systems part of Dilemmas
In order to fully understand Earth processes such as plate tectonics, mountain building, erosion, evolution, and various time scales of global climate change students must have a firm grasp of geologic time and the age of the Earth. Mary is a student in science class for teachers. In a reflective writing assignment Mary reported that she did not believe that the Earth was 4.6 billion years old and constructed a list of young earth arguments that indicate an age of ~6,000 years.

Empathy part of Dilemmas
Students in a small upper level class discussing global warming students argue that anything we do to "save" the environment is worth any cost and ultimately benefits everyone equally. We explain that a person in another country might be willing to accept a degraded environment in exchange for economic improvement. Students are willing to accept that as an intellectual argument but it becomes clear in subsequent discussions that they did not change their arguments to accommodate this idea.

Mineralogy Motivation - A Real-Life Tale of Woe part of Dilemmas
I teach mineralogy (do you feel my pain?). Mineralogy has a reputation for being a "weed out" course, and not very many students look forward to taking this class. But in addition, in our department I've encountered another problem: we have a degree option in paleontology, and students who self-select this option basically want to be Jack Horner and head out to the hills to dig up dinosaur bones.

Is planetary change bad? part of Dilemmas
We hear about global warming as a problem and there is a reasonable consensus that humans are exacerbating the problem. Our global population is currently about 6 billion, and scientists estimate that the planet's capacity to sustain ends at about 12 to 15 billion. Doubling time is 38 years. Next examine the core profile. Tundra pollen lies in the lowest layers, sage and prairie grasses in the middle and spruce and pine pollen in the top.

Trilobites Live! part of Dilemmas
I teach Historical Geology at a large public university. As I was setting up class the other day, a student, Eric, nervously approached me and asked a question that caught me off-guard. "How do you know for sure that trilobites and humans didn't co-exist?" he asked. I smiled, thinking he was making a joke. After all, we were several weeks into a second-semester geology course and this was the first time he had expressed these ideas. "Nice one," I said, "how can I really help you today?" But then I realized he wasn't trying to be funny. His face turned stoic and serious, but before I could gather myself and formulate an answer, he continued, "You throw around these huge numbers for the age of the earth, the age of the rocks and the age of the fossils. But how do you know? Aren't you just repeating the numbers that you have read elsewhere? In a church group, we learned that humans and all other life were created at the same time, only a few thousand years ago."

Convincing faculty about the importance of the affective domain part of Dilemmas
Professors may believe they are "only there to teach" and the students are "there to learn," and it is not the professor's responsibility to worry about motivating them or making them feel good about learning. Possibly, students don't have the ability to succeed, so why should a professor try to motivate students who have a stronger potential to fail?