Initial Publication Date: July 15, 2008

What kind of long-term impact might we want an intro geo course to have?

In what ways could we change their thinking to benefit themselves and society?
In what ways could we increase their capabilities and add value to their lives for the future?


We want students to:
- Recognize and understand that the live on a planet with geological processes and we as humans are part of the geological processes in order to be able to make better political decisions, land use decisions.
- Develop quantitative literacy, basic statistics, and that geology is a quantitative science that is transferable
- Be able to decipher what media tells you and what the reality is, including knowing where to go to find facts (not just opinions)
- Recognize the difference between science and non-science, including analyzing evidence and the possibility of reconciling science and faith
- Understand the scientific process to evaluate the quality of information they ingest
- Be comfortable with science and math, that it is something that they can do
- Understand how we know what we know about the earth and how we as scientists collect our data
- Understand that scientists follow variable paths
- Read a graph! Simple skills that are applicable to many disciplines and careers
- Understand the infrastructure that is related to geology, like quarries, landfills, etc.
- Appreciate landscapes where they live and visit, both related to curiosity and things like development
- Communicate orally and in written form about science
- Appreciate the concept of uncertainty and what it means for evaluating what we know
- Understand and determine where you are, including basic spatial analysis skills
- Understand what it is that they know and how to improve what they know (meta-cognition skills)
- Make geology a part of how they make decisions as a community about economics, ethics, and other long-term decisions
- Look for the influence of geology in history and international relations
- Recapture a sense of wonder about the world and the joy of geology
- Get them to care.
- Understand that the Earth is a complex system and how the geosciences model complex systems and can constrain how they systems act.
- Be able to formulate a meaningful question, and be able to find a reasonable answer to it.
- Not hate science.