Geology Course Experiences – January 2025
/I started a second semester at Missouri State University in January – taking a geology course (online) and lab (in person). The semester did not start out as well as the one in the fall:
Unfortunately for me, the department had made the lab optional so the university’s program for people over 62 only applied to one part – make the semester considerably more expensive than the fall semester.
I also mistakenly signed up for an online lecture course that didn’t begin until March (it didn’t occur to me that there would be a schedule like that) so I had to make a quick adjustment to get a course that matched the lab duration.
The lecture part of the course (online) had a digital textbook that include study aids that was required for the course….that cost over $80. It was quite a ‘sticker shock.’
The first lab happened before I got the lecture course situation fixed, but evidently it was also before most people in the lab had attended a class too. The instructor walked us through the lab as a group, but she talked to fast that I wonder how many of the students understood it very well. Fortunately it was a topic I was familiar with.
I’ve completed the first two chapters of the textbook that have been assigned – and the associated questions/quizzes. There was one short YouTube video that was included in the assignments. I am disappointed that the professor does not include any recorded lectures for the online course; she did invite us to a similar course that she is teaching in person if we wanted to hear a lecture on particular topics…and I have gone to one.
The course and lab both reference field trips but there were none listed on the schedule for either one. I asked the lab instructor…they only knew that there hadn’t been field trips since COVID. When I emailed the professor, I was told that there would be a field trip in early April. Would it have happened without my query? Geology field trips are some of my favorites. When I was in high school, I went on several field trips with Southern Methodist University’s geology department since I had a friend whose father was a paleontologist there…and then in college I tagged along with my husband’s geology class at El Centro (community college) and University of Texas (rock roses and marine fossils and caves). In Maryland, the master naturalist training included a hike in Patapsco Valley State Park with a geologist! So – I really want at least one geology field trip from this course.
The professor also sent out a pdf with a self-guided geology tour of the campus. I did it last week; the day was too cold to do it leisurely although I did notice non-geology things along the way too.
As I walked from the lecture building toward the first stop on the tour – I made a slight detour to photograph Ozark Witch Hazel that blooms in January. The buds were open but the streamers were still curled…probably because it has been very cold during the past week.
The first stop was to see the “Carthage Stone” (limestone) façade of Carrington Hall. The foundation of the building is Missouri Red Granite from the St. Francois mountains of southeastern Missouri.
Inside the building, there is a tile floor (not a geological feature) and steps/decorative spheres of marble….a grand staircase.
I photographed tiny fossils in the polished limestone stairs of Hill Hall. The building was constructed in 1924…one of the older buildings on campus.
The Memorial Garden near the student union building has a gabbro slab (igneous like granite but with larger crystals and dark silicate minerals like plagioclase feldspar). There is also as sandstone ramp/wall along the walk to the Memorial Garden. The stones are from northwestern Arkansas and reminded me of some sandstone my grandfather used to construct some benches back in the 1960s.
There are dolomite rocks in some of the planting areas – ugly but interesting.
At the southeastern door of the student union, the slab to the right of the door is more Carthage Stone…this time with more visible fossils! The step up to the door is granite porphyry…with different crystal sizes indicating that it had 2 phases of cooling and crystallization.
It had been a cold walk but the exercise of being out and about felt good as I walked back to my car to go home. I am thinking of the walk as the first field trip of the course.
