A Workshop: Developing Quantitative Activities for Upper Division Geoscience Students

June 27-29, 2005
Carleton College, Northfield, MN


These side-by-side workshops provide an opportunity for faculty teaching upper division courses in surface processes and climate and global change to

  • refine an assignment or lab activity that teaches quantitative aspects of these topics,
  • create supporting materials that will help other faculty use your activity, and
  • put all of these materials onto the web as part of the Teaching Quantitative Skills in the Geosciences site.
A primary feature of the workshop is review of activities by other faculty teaching similar material and by mathematicians teaching the quantitative concepts fundamental to the activity.

During the three day workshop at Carleton participants will

  • discuss their activity with other geoscientists and mathematicians and critique the activities of other participants
  • revise the activity and make a web-accessible version with supporting materials for faculty
  • design complementary activities suitable for introductory courses that initiate development of the skills needed to succeed in the upper division courses.
  • develop recommendations for additional web-resources of high value to faculty teaching quantitative concepts in surface processes or climate change

The workshops will provide an unusual opportunity to focus on how we teach quantitative skills to undergraduate geoscience majors and will result in a web publication that has been reviewed by peers for each participant. Activities developed in a similar workshop in 2004 demonstrate the product format.

The workshop is open to faculty in the United States teaching surface processes or global change to upper division geoscience students from all types of institutions. This teaching may be in a course with one of these titles or may be part of a course that includes one of these topics. Participants will be selected on the basis of the activity they submit and their responses to the application form to ensure that a diverse set of high quality activities will emerge from the workshop. We plan to select 15 participants who teach surface processes and 15 who teach aspects of climate and global change. Participants will be reimbursed for travel costs and will receive housing and board during the workshop.

Workshop Leaders

  • Greg Hancock, College of William and Mary, Surface Processes
  • Eric Small, University of Colorado, Boulder, Climate Change
  • Sam Patterson, Carleton College, Mathematics
  • Steve Galovich, Lake Forest College, Mathematics
  • Cathy Manduca, Carleton College, Geoscience Education
  • Heather Macdonald, College of William and Mary, Geoscience Education
  • Jen Wenner, University of Wisconsin, OshKosh, Geoscience Education

    • This opportunity is made possible by grant number NSF-03-04762 from the Geoscience Directorate of the National Science Foundation.

    Disclaimer: Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.


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