Assistant Chairperson for Geology

This position usually rotates in two year terms. I previously served from Fall, 2004 to Spring 2006 and Fall 2012 until Spring 2015.  I might actually be doing it now.   Such duties include the hiring, local management, and evaluation of adjunct faculty for evening and weekend classes. Regardless of whether I'm chairing, I work closely with my colleagues to disseminate information about local geological meetings and workshops to our geology majors and students interested in geology.

Web Site Development

At the end of the Spring 1997 semester, I began experimenting with HTML, the programming language in which "web pages" are written. I had a nasty flu at the time and was confined to my house.  After becoming bored with daytime soaps and talk shows (about 10 minutes ;-), I began experimenting with HTML software and within two or three days had programmed the basic organization of the Physical Sciences Department Web Site. Since then, Wayne Johnson & I have been actively building and maintaining this site with two overall goals. The first is to disseminate information to our students. This information includes not only class notes, schedules, and syllabi; but also links to Open Educational Resources (OERs) for students seeking educational or practical information in the Physical Sciences.  Our second objective is to use the web site as a marketing tool, linking it to various search engines so that an interested web surfer may be enticed into taking courses in our programs.

Field Courses (GLG 229, 230 & 231) & Field Day Trip (all Geology Labs) Development 

GCC's Geology Program has an excellent reputation for,  and a long tradition of exposing its students to real geology in the field.   In collaboration with my department colleagues, the State Articulation Task Force, and the Maricopa Geology Instructional Council, I have been involved in the creation of several courses serving geology majors, in-service and/or future K-12 Earth Science teachers, as well as the community in general. These courses are variable credit repeatable field courses designed serve their students by providing: (1) field trips to rock/mineral/fossil collection localities; (2) field trips to specific geologic features; and (3) field excursions designed to better their functional understanding of the geology of Arizona and the southwest. I put together GCC's first installment of the GLG229 course, a six day field excursion through central and northern Arizona and southern Utah in the pre-Summer session of 1998. I have taught several sections of GLG 229 and 230 since then.  In addition to our field courses, we have developed a wide variety of local day-trips open to all students in our standard lab classes.  My colleagues & I have spent many hours creating  and leading trips to expose many hundreds of students to the spectacular geological features of the nearby  Basin & Range, Transition Zone and Colorado Plateau Geologic Provinces. 

Development of GLG103

GLG103 is the largest lab course in the Physical Sciences Department with sometimes over 14 sections at about 24 students per section. This course is taught by 4-7 full and part-time instructors. For a variety of reasons (including course articulation, fairness, academic integrity, etc.), we are committed to making sure that the lab sections are equivalent in content, level of difficulty, policies, and grading practices. Consequently, I have worked and continue to work closely with my colleagues to establish grading standards; prepare quiz/exam sets of rocks, minerals, and maps; assemble and share demonstration materials and visuals; and orchestrate field trips.   

Course Assessment

The renewal of academic accreditation requires tangible demonstration of our effectiveness as an institution in educating students in our various disciplines. Toward this end, I have been collaborating with our Department Assessment Coordinator (DAC), Pam Nelson  and our Department Chair, Dave Raffaelle, as well as with my other colleagues in the department to develop objective, statistically significant measures of how well our students are learning geology. In addition, we are involved in determining how our courses meet the educational needs of our students and the community in general. This ongoing project will be continually revised and monitored as long as we teach at GCC.

Satellite Campus Courses

To accommodate the changing needs of our community, the geology program has expanded beyond the borders of GCC's main campus to include offerings at GCC North and, for several years, ASU-West. I have not only taught courses at our satellite campuses, I have also been involved in the planning and implementing course offerings, establishing classroom and lab locations, faculty resources, storage facilities, computer lab facilities, and student resources.

Service Learning

Spurred initially by discussions with Karen Conzelman and the Biology Department and facilitated by Mary Leskovsky of the Honors program, I have incorporated a service learning component into my honors coursework (when offered) by having Honors students teach Earth Science concepts to groups of K-12 students within our community. The initial trials, the identification of minerals, were successful, although I'm not sure who was more nervous-- my students, or me ;-)

Community Outreach

Since I joined the faculty in 1994, I have been involved in several department "open houses" including SciTech Festivals wherein we deliver short educational presentations within our specialties aimed at various audiences including "home-school" parents, teachers, and K-12 students (see Service Learning above). These presentations range from fully prepared mini-courses to impromptu and informal question and answer sessions. I also sometimes deliver guest lectures at local high schools. Such events tend to be scheduled without much notice and seem to occur with variable frequency. In addition, we often serve as the community "clearinghouse" of geological information ranging from simple questions of rock and mineral identification to more complicated geologic issues involving real estate or other community concerns. These queries are posed through almost all media, from in-person to e-mail. These services also tend to be sporadic.

Construction of the Physical Sciences Building

The 1994 bond election earmarked funds used to construct a new Physical Sciences building which now houses the Physical Sciences and Chemistry Departments at GCC. As a member of the committee overseeing this endeavor, I have been intimately involved in nearly every phase of the project-- from the draft of Educational Specifications, to the hiring of architects, to the inspection and editing of designs, and finally, to the completion of the "punch list" items.  I'm told that someday it will actually be done.