Arizona State University, Dissertation Committee

From 2011-2012, I served as the geologic advisor on a colleague's dissertation committee in the College of Education at Arizona State University. The student successfully earned a Doctorate in Education.

Northern Arizona University Geology Department Advisory Board

From 2005 - 2007, I attended advisory board meetings in Flagstaff and Denver to contribute the community college perspective to NAU's Geology Department in matters of recruitment and curriculum, and, to a lesser degree, alumni relations, department funding and industry relations. My experience provided me with an excellent opportunity to stay current with future educational and employment trends in the geosciences.

National Science Foundation Grant Proposals

Over the years, I have participated in several attempts to secure funding for educational projects under the National Science Foundation's DUE program. My most recent efforts in 2008 involved collaboration with colleagues at Northern Arizona University on a proposal entitled COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Enhancing undergraduate geoscience education with pen-based computers.  Although the proposal received very favorable reviews, the NSF was not able to fund it within its restricted budget of the time.

National Science Foundation/American Geophysical Union Project

I was a co-investigator on a National Science Foundation sponsored project administrated through the American Geophysical Union. The project title is "Using Computer Technology and Multimedia Materials to Develop an Integrated Systems Approach to the Earth Sciences". The principle investigators are Dr. Michelle Hall-Wallace and Professor Robert F. Butler at the University of Arizona. Although numerous exercises were produced at the University of Arizona, my involvement with this project resulted in two local products. The first was the construction of the GeoScape and publication of its associated exercises. The second was the production of a web-based tutorial on geologic time, structures and the interpretation of geologic maps.

ACEPT- Arizona Collaboration for the Excellence in the Preparation of Teachers

From 1998 - 2002, I served as a faculty representative/consultant to the ACEPT program (an NSF sponsored project administrated through Arizona State University). The ACEPT program's focus is to examine and perhaps re-define the curriculum of introductory college level science courses to make them less intimidating and more relevant, more hands-on, and more problem-solving oriented to future K-12 teachers. The intent of the project is to develop new teaching styles that these future educators may integrate into their classes to turn stem the tide of science indifference or ignorance in future generations. As part of our involvement, I spearheaded the effort to produce GeoScape, an instructional landscape built adjacent to the Physical Sciences Building.

Co-Author, Physical and Historical Geology Lab Manuals

Commercially published manuals have two major shortcomings for use in our physical geology laboratory courses. First, they are written so as to be marketable to audiences all over North America. Consequently, these manuals tend to be very general- often emphasizing maps of Appalachian areas to which most of our students cannot easily relate. In addition, many manuals tend to rely on a memorization approach to identification of only a few select rocks, rather than on the fundamental observations that geologists use to distinguish them. Secondly, commercially published manuals tend to be very expensive- almost as expensive as textbooks themselves. Yet lab manuals are designed to be used only once. Consequently, Bob Thompson & Wayne Johnson elected to publish an in-house manual customized for maps of our areas, rocks and minerals in our collections, and coordinated with exercises in our courses.  When I began teaching labs, I began adding and modifying the lab on the basis of my experiences with the hundred or so students that take GLG103 with me each semester. It is a work in progress and allows us to experiment with different approaches and content arrangements for the benefit of our students. We can publish it for less than a third of the cost of commercial lab manuals. I spend about a week or so between each semester working on modifications to the lab manual.  When Pam Nelson arrived and began building up the Historical Geology program, we collaborated in the design and publishing of that lab manual.

Volunteer Research, U. S. Geological Survey

I occasionally still work on research projects that I began while still employed by the U. S. Geological Survey. For better or for worse, and with apologies to my former co-workers, these tend to be my lowest priority given my present duties as described above.  Nonetheless, I found time in the Summer of 1997 to advance the publication status of my work on the source of the Apache Leap Tuff in central Arizona. In addition, I hope to do tie off some work on structural rotations of fault blocks in the Virgin Mountains region of northwestern Arizona.  Most recently, I was asked for help in retrieving USGS paleomagnetic data sets possibly relating to the geologic evolution of the Grand Canyon.