DEPARTMENT PHILOSOPHY
The Geology Department at Colorado College offers introductory and advanced courses in earth sciences that may lead to a B.A. in geology.
The courses in the major are designed to
- provide a foundation for a professional career in the earth sciences,
- provide the background for graduate school, which has increasingly become a necessary prerequisite to a professional career,
- provide an opportunity for students majoring in other fields to combine their expertise with geology,
- and educate students about the physical environment and our place in it, as part of a liberal arts education.
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THE BLOCK PLAN
The Colorado College Block Plan allows us to offer a unique program in geology. Because students take just one course at a time, with class size limited to 25 students, the program is intensive and individualized.
The flexibility of the Block Plan also allows faculty and students to pursue independent study and research projects, during the academic year as well as during summer and winter breaks. Much of this work takes place away from the campus. Many of our students do field-oriented research as part of a required senior seminar project or as part of a distinction thesis.
Students with strong interests in both geology and environmental issues may major in Geology and take elective courses in other environmental sciences and environmental issues. Alternatively, such students may major in Environmental Science complimented with coursework in Geology.
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GEOLOGY COURSES
Courses are field-oriented and include day-long field trips in the local Colorado Front Range and weeklong (or longer) trips through Colorado and into New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, and Wyoming. We thus take advantage of the spectacular and varied geology of the Rocky Mountain, Basin and Range, and Colorado Plateau Provinces.
- Introductory geology courses spend nearly half of their class time outdoors, with students seeing examples of the various rock types and their stratigraphic and structural relationships and preparing one or more maps of local geology.
- Paleontology and sedimentation classes visit fossil sites, work out paleoecological patterns, and interpret sedimentary structures.
- Mineralogy classes visit local quarries and mines, while petrology classes look at a variety of metamorphic terrains, study a large granite batholith, and map volcanic and Precambrian crystalline regions.
- The Structural Geology and field courses do extensive mapping and structural interpretation in both sedimentary and metamorphic terrains.
- Geomorphology classes examine surficial processes in environments ranging from the desert Southwest to the Colorado alpine.
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GEOLOGY NEWS/EVENTS
RESEARCH/INDEPENDENT STUDY
Keck Consortium for Undergraduate Research in Geology has allowed many of our students to take part in consortium-sponsored and -funded research projects. Other students have worked closely with department faculty members on research projects, and still others have developed research projects on their own. This work is often partially supported by college and departmental funds set aside for student research.
The department also sponsors an internship program, under which students may receive a block of independent study credit for research done off campus under the supervision of established academic, government, or industry geologists.
Other upper-level courses (economic geology, geophysics, hydrology, and others) include substantial field components as well. The Block Plan has allowed us to offer courses in Scotland, New Zealand, Japan, Costa Rica, the Caribbean,
Argentina and the Canadian Rockies, as well as, throughout the American West. A geology major at Colorado College will spend about 60 days in the field fulfilling basic requirements, and can do as much additional field work as time and interest allow. |
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