04-1931 Geology Contact - Department of Geography - Geology

Mt. St. Helens in earlyNovember.Message… continued from page 1down to Mt. St. Helens. Our prospects of a goodview were pretty iffy to begin with. Clouds were lowand lots of fresh snow covered the road in. We werethe first car up the mountain that day, but as weneared the summit the clouds broke for a fantasticview. We took plenty of pictures, and took advantageof some short hikes and road cuts. When wearrived back at the hotel, I was chagrined to see thatthe flash card in my new digital camera had malfunctioned,and most of the pictures were notrecorded. Jason took a number of pictures too,but his camera was lost or stolen on his way home.Fortunately the memories are fresh.Finally, I decided to move into the 20th centuryin Structural Geology. I moved all of my lectures toPowerPoint, and relied heavily on CD-ROM andInternet technologies.I hope that for each of you 2004 is anotherprosperous year and that you and your family enjoygood health. I invite you to visit the department thenext time you are in town so you can meet some ofour new colleagues. I also encourage your feedbackabout the happenings in the geology program.Please feel free to contact me at dhmalon@ilstu.eduor (309) 438-2692. If you haven’t looked lately,please visit our departmental Web site atwww.geo.ilstu.edu/. In particular, I encourageyou to have a look at our photo gallery and takeadvantage of our weekly colloquia series.Dave Malone[Editor’s note: Readers will notice use of the firstperson“I” throughout the newsletter. That “I” isDavid Malone, who wrote most of the articles.]The ContactApril 2004 • Published annually • Volume 3, No. 1Illinois State University, Department of Geography-Geology, Campus Box 4400, Normal, IL 61790-4400Liz King is principal investigatoron successful NSF grantBy Liz KingIn July I heard from National Science Foundationthat we were awarded our grant submitted tothe Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory ImprovementProgram in the Divisionof Undergraduate Education. We were awarded$50,000 (with an equal match from the college)toward our proposal: integrating the petrographicmicroscope, cathodoluminescence, and digitalimage analysis into the undergraduate geology curriculum.What this really means is that we neededsome new petrographic microscopes and we hadto jazz up our proposal for NSF. The microscopesarrived in October and are greatly appreciatedalready.The concept behind this project is to not onlyintroduce optical mineralogy in my mineralogycourse using modern microscopes, but to continueto use petrography in petrology, the two sedimentarycourses, paleontology, and structure. Cathodoluminescencewill be used in these courses as well,with an emphasis on carbonates. This will give thestudents an excellent opportunity to use the newestequipment availablefor the classroom,becomeinvolved inresearch involvingpetrography, andgain skills thatweren’t possiblebefore this grant.The classroomhas been transformeddrastically,Liz King and students are studyinga granite thin section using thenewly obtained petrographic/imaging equipment.not just because we have six new microscopes sittingin there. Each scope has a digital camera withlive video feed to a monitor. I can also use this forteaching optics, which has been fantastic. Studentswork in groups with everyone seeing the image onthe monitor. Using microscopes is no longer anactivity in isolation. Groups also can capture imageswith the digital camera and put together a Power-Point presentation from the lab. The group workand weekly student presentations throughout thesemester have led to camaraderie that usuallywasn’t reached until the end of spring semester.The scopes will be integrated over the next fewyears into the core courses of our major, but theyare making a great impact even in the short eightweeks of their use so far.2