From the President
In
my first message as president, I want to thank my predecessors, Andy Buddington and Jenny Thomson, for the tremendous job
they did organizing, sustaining, and stimulating the Pacific Northwest Section
of NAGT. I am excited to play a part in this organization because I get
energized every time we meet. It makes me feel that I am not alone in the
trenches but instead am working with many kindred spirits toward shared goals,
driven by a common belief in the importance of geoscience education. As
president, I want to make sure all members feel such a sense of camaraderie.
A good example of an energizing
meeting was Bellingham
this past June (more on page 6). I found the field trips and presentations
informative and open to discussion and debate, as they should be. In the field,
we learned how much has been pinned down in the tectonically mobile San Juan Islands and western North Cascade, and which
geological questions have yet to be resolved. These places are crucial to the
tectonic history of the PNW. Knowing about such geology in greater depth and
from personal experience enables all who went on the field trips to teach it
better. The fact that we got to spend two brilliantly sunny summer days on the
shores of beautiful islands and in the forested lap of craggy mountains is the type of perk that we
all enjoy, a benefit of being a member of NAGT PNW.
Although the value of our
profession may seem obvious to us, we have to keep making the case that what we
do as geoscience teachers is important, without doubt. In my home state of Washington, the
graduation requirements for high school students are planned to include
standardized tests on science, including earth science (page 4, this issue).
Although not everyone supports standardized tests, I find it encouraging that
earth science is in there along with chemistry, physics, and biology. In a
world that reels from news of events like Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, spiking oil and gasoline prices,
and evidence of global warming correlated with the combustion of fossil fuels,
I am hopeful that there is an increasing public awareness of the need for earth
science knowledge. I think that each of you who has geoscience knowledge, and
who teaches earth science, possess rare skills and exceptional value,
regardless of what it may say on your pay stub.
As we look ahead to our future
meetings and development as professionals, I expect to be involved in lively
discussion on many exciting and challenging fronts, including:
·
Keeping geoscience on equal footing with the
other basic sciences in times of tight education budgets and well-funded
sophistries such as “intelligent design.”
·
Managing the erosion of barriers between
geography and geology, as GIS and GPS technologies keep expanding (how many
computer-using kids have not used
Google Earth recently?
·
Making best use of technology to advance our
students abilities and opportunities.
·
Linking global (“satellite views”) of earth
systems with detailed and verifiable data gathered up close and in person
(“ground truth”).
·
Getting
out from behind the lectern more. Research makes it clear lectures alone are
not the best use of class time. To enable students to comprehend and apply
concepts, lectures should be a limited part of a mixture that also includes
__________ what? You fill in the blank.
I am interested in what you think
the NAGT PNW section can do for you, and what you want to do for the section.
Serendipitously enough, one of the best things that you can do for the section
and one of the best things it can do for you centers on the same event—the
annual section meeting. Giving a talk or leading a field trip at the annual
meeting helps improve geoscience education in the Pacific
Northwest, advances your professional development, and gives you
the opportunity to more fully explore, refine, and share your own innovative
approaches. Those of us who have helped host one of our annual meetings can
tell you that the scale is small enough that it is a manageable amount of work.
As I have experienced it, helping to put on one of our annual meetings is
richly rewarding.
Our next meeting as the PNW
section of NAGT will be in Portland, June
19-22, 2007. Wine-lovers among us need not worry; Scott Burns is involved
and will have some more to teach us about the relationship between the vine and
the earth. There will be other great field trips and activities as well, so
start penciling in your calendars and look for the details (page 5, this issue
).
As for what else the NAGT PNW can
do for you, let me know. I look forward to hearing how you fill in the blank,
and what the rest of us can do to help you.
Dr. Ralph Dawes,
Wenatchee Valley
College
Wenatchee, Washington
Outstanding Earth Science Teacher
2006 Winner
Ron Metzger, Southwestern Oregon Community College
The Pacific Northwest Section OEST award this year
goes to Jodie Harnden of Sunridge Middle School
in Pendleton, Oregon.
Ms. Harnden is an experienced middle school educator with over two
decades of classroom experience. Jodie
has had a number of publications in the National Science Teachers Association
(NSTA) journal Science Scope, Oregon
Science Teacher Association’s (OSTA) The
Science Teacher and the National Middle Level Science Teachers
Association’s (NMLSTA) Leveline. Jodie has been an active participant in each
of these organizations, having served as president of NMLSTA, an Affiliate
Director of NSTA and an OSTA Board Director.
Currently Jodie serves as secretary for OSTA and is running for an NSTA
Director position. She is involved in
numerous state level groups and projects including Science Content and
Assessment Panel, Hydromania Teacher Program, S’COOL Project (NASA),
Oregon-Online instructor (Southern Oregon ESD) and is an adjunct geology
faculty member at Blue Mountain C.C.
Jodie has recently received National Board Certification in Early
Adolescence: Science. She is also a past
winner of an NAGT Dorothy L. Stout Professional Development Grant. The PNW section is fortunate to have
educators like Jodie Harnden that bring their passion for earth science and
teaching our youth to their classrooms.
Maybe her most significant contribution appears in the comments from
students and family, including “It’s time to go already?” and “My child talks
about science all the time.” It is with
great pleasure that the Pacific Northwest
section of NAGT recognizes Jodie Harnden as an outstanding teacher.
2006 Section
Election Results
For those of you unlucky enough
to miss hearing the results at the June PNW NAGT conference in Bellingham, you have
probably been eagerly, perhaps even ANXIOUSLY awaiting the May 2006 voting
results for our Section’s officers.
After tallying a record number of votes, the officers are:
President- Ralph
Dawes, Wenatchee
Valley College
Vice-President- Ron Metzger, Southwestern Oregon Community College
Secretary/Treasurer- Bob
Christman, Western
Washington University
Newsletter Editor- Cassie Strickland, Yakima
Valley Community
College
OEST Coordinator- Davene Meehan, Oak Harbor,
WA
State/Province Councilors-
Alaska-
Cathy Connor, Univ. Alaska
Southeast, Juneau
Michael Collins, Anchorage
British
Columbia- Mary Lou Bevier, Univeresity
of British Columbia
Brett
Gilley, Douglas
College
Idaho- Shawn Willsey, College of Southern Idaho
Oregon- Joe Graf, Southern Oregon University
Tom Lindsay, Portland State
University
Washington- Joe Hull, Seattle Central
Community College
Jeff Tepper, University of Puget Sound
Congratulations to all of the
new/returning officers, and thank you for voting!
Coming, Going, Shuffling
Kathryn Hoppe has joined the geoscience faculty at Green
River Community College, teaching geology, oceanography and
interdisciplinary science. Kathryn has
degrees from Washington University, the University of Washington
and UC Santa Cruz, and has taught at Bellevue C.C., North Seattle C.C. and the
UW. Her research interests include isotopes, paleontology and
ecology. You can send her a welcoming email at khoppe@greenriver.edu.
The
University
of British Columbia
hired Dr Sara Harris in fall 2005 as
an additional faculty member specializing in earth science teaching within the
Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences.
Sara's background is in geology and geological oceanography, and in
addition to her course duties in EOS, which include coordinating (and teaching
parts of) five sections of a large 1st year Natural Disasters course, she will
be involved in the Environmental Sciences program and the Carl Weiman Science
Education Initiative (more on CWSEI below).
State by State
British Columbia, Yukon,
Idaho, Oregon
& Washington
British Columbia
State Councilors: Mary Lou Bevier & Brett Gilley
·
Carl
Weiman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI). Nobel Prize winner Dr. Carl Weiman is coming to the
University of British Columbia (UBC) in January
2007 to begin the CWSEI, a program that he has already started at University of Colorado. All science departments at UBC
will be competing for funds to upgrade science education, and the Department of
Earth and Ocean Sciences (EOS) at UBC has a committee chaired by Dr. Sara Harris that will be submitting
a proposal shortly. This proposal will be a department-wide effort to improve
science teaching via increasing use of educational technology and
student-centered learning.
·
Teachers'
Resource Centre, Vancouver. The Teachers' Resource Centre is now active
within the Pacific Museum of the Earth
in the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences at UBC; it provides materials and
curricula for K-12 earth science teachers. Contact Curator Mackenzie Parker <mparker@eos.ubc.ca>
for details.
·
BC
Colleges and Universities Earth Science Articulation Committee Meeting, May
2007. Hosted by UBC-EOS, the Committee meets once-a-year as
mandated by provincial legislation. Representatives from all of the colleges
and universities in BC meet to discuss issues related to the smooth transfer of
credit for students who change institutions within the province. This process
has been very successful. If anyone from the Pacific NW Section of NAGT would
like to attend this meeting to see how the process works, please contact Mary Lou Bevier <mbevier@eos.ubc.ca> this fall.
Idaho
State Councilor:
Shawn Willsey
·
Scholarship
Opportunity. Applications for field scholarships
through the Tobacco Root Geological Society are due by February 1, 2007.
For more info, go to: http://trgs.org/scholar.htm
·
32nd
Annual Tobacco Root Geological Society Field Conference. The TRGS field conference will be in Dillon, Montana,
August 2-5, 2007. For more info, contact Rob
Thomas r_thomas@umwestern.edu, or go
online to http://trgs.org/
Washington
State
Councilors: Joe Hull & Jeff Tepper
·
Global Warming Symposium, February 28th,
2007. Yakima
Valley Community
College in Yakima,
WA will host a symposium
entitled: YVCC Student Symposium on
Global Warming: An Investigation of the
Science, Sociology and Politics of Global Warming. This student-hosted symposium will take place in the
Parker Room at the Deccio Higher Education Center, on the Yakima Campus at 12th
and Arlington Avenues. Using an
interdisciplinary approach, students from both the Grandview and Yakima
campuses will explore not only the science and history of atmospheric warming,
but also the effects this trend may have on society, especially Eastern
Washington’s agriculturally-based, irrigation-dependant economy. Students will also examine how humans have
created the current problem, and discuss the political nature of a global
solution. This event is free and open to
the public. For more information, please
call Claire Carpenter at 509.574.4866 or email ccarpenter@yvcc.edu
State
of Earth Science:
Is the WASL a sound metric for assessing
geological comprehension?
Joe Hull, Seattle Central
Community College
The flip side to the
Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALR) is the Washington Assessment of
Student Learning or WASL. How is geology
tested by the WASL? For sample
questions, go to:
http://www.k12.wa.us/assessment/WASL/testquestions.aspx
Here’s one for
grade 10 on continental collision: “What would be the result when two continental plates collide?”
A. The plates would stop moving
where the continents collided.
B. After the collision, the continental
plates would immediately start to move apart.
C. The crust would fold,
creating a mountain range where the continental plates collided.
D. Volcanic activity associated
with hot spot would appear where the continental plates collided.
Most of us
would probably choose C as the safest answer; 45% of kids did so. But if you picked A (16%), thinking that
buoyant continents don’t subduct into the mantle, and therefore plate
convergence would be slowed and eventually stopped, you’re wrong! If you picked B (24%), because you know
something about the Wilson Cycle, you’re wrong too! If you shunned C, reasoning that colliding
continents form a “crustal sandwich,” not an accordion-like train wreck, then
think again, because C is Correct. 13%
of kids chose the ringer D, whereas 2% would not or could not fill in any
circle with their number 2.
Many WASL questions require
explanation of the student’s choice of answer, with partial credit given for
good reasoning. Unfortunately, the collision
question was treated as a right-or-wrong multiple choice problem (“selected
response”), whereas an explanation-based approach (“short constructed
response”) might have been better. The
collision question is problematic in part because answers A and B were not
appropriately vetted, there’s too much “right” in those wrongs. And, the students are still marked down, even
if their answers are well-reasoned.
Can anything be
done about problems with WASL science questions? Not under the current system. The Cosmodemonic Testing Company of Bayonne, New
Jersey, is safely out of reach.
K-12’s
New Science Curriculum, B.C.
Mary Lou Bevier, University of British Columbia
Information on
the teaching of earth science in K-12 schools in British Columbia (summarized below) was
relayed by Sheila Stenzel, Mineral
Resources Education Program Director for the B.C. Mining
Association. As of fall 2006, new science curricula in B.C.
emphasize earth science (geology, rock cycle, plate tectonics) in grade 7
science. There is some earth science in primary grades, also (soils and earth
science can be taught as an option in part of primary science curriculum).
Natural resources extraction is taught in grade 5. There are earth science
threads throughout grade 8-10 science courses, but topics vary yearly. No
standardized testing exists except as part of the grade 10 science provincial
exam, which has an earth science component. The Geology 12 course, taught in
relatively few schools, does have a standardized provincial exam which can be
used for university entrance. See http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/irp/irp_sci.htm
for complete details.
NSF-EDGE: Alaska
Teachers & Students Put Field
Experience to Work in Classrooms
Cathy
Connor, University of Alaska Southeast, Juneau
The Experimental
Discoveries in Geoscience Education Project (EDGE) project offers the
opportunity for in-service Alaska
teachers to interact with university research faculty, science educators and university
undergraduate science majors to participate in earth science field training.
Teachers increase their respective Earth science content knowledge through
field experiences, gain computer mapping technology skill sets in the ARCGIS
environment, and acquire technology that they can transfer directly into their
classrooms.
The first cohort of 15 high school and middle school teachers attended a
ten day June workshop at the University Alaska Southeast in Juneau to participate in active studies of a
dynamic glacier watershed. In between cramponing over the ice, chest-wadering
across streams with flow meters, and rafting down rivers, the teachers learned
the rudiments of ArcGIS and created mapping projects that displayed their field
data.
In August, 27 middle school and high school students recommended by
teachers from the June session attended a five day workshop to gain experiences
similar to their teachers.
This fall the
EDGE teachers are enrolled in a three credit online geology and science project
mentoring course using Eluminate software to created a live web-based
classroom. They will mentor their EDGE students through semester scale, science
fair projects and return to Juneau
in March to present their work at an EDGE symposium and at the Southeast Alaska
Regional Science Fair. We will be recruiting a second cohort of Alaskan EDGE
teachers in Spring 2007.
Online, access EDGE at http://gina.uas.alaska.edu/joomla
Select ‘EDGE’ from the left-hand menu.
GSA Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA
October 22-25th, 2006
The annual
Geological Society of America meeting is almost upon us. As a reminder, please make note in your
programs of the NAGT-sponsored education sessions, which can also be found
online at:
http://www.nagt.org/nagt/programs/GSA06.html
On
Saturday, October 21st, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., a Geoscience
Educator’s Social Reception will be held at the Marriott Grand Ballroom. We hope to see you there! For more information on the reception, go to:
http://www.nagt.org/files/nagt/programs/receptioninvite2006.pdf
NAGT Pacific NW Section
Annual Conference, Portland, OR
June 19 – 22, 2007
Time has come to
mark your calendar for the 2007 NAGT PNW Section annual conference, which will
be hosted by Portland State University,
Portland, Oregon. Scheduled for mid-June, the 2007 meeting is
sure to memorable. Portland
is within short driving distance of several world-famous scenic locales,
including the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area, Mt.
Hood, Mt.
St. Helens and one of the most scenic
stretches along the Pacific
Coast. Field trip itineraries include:
·
Elliot
Glacier, Mt. Hood
·
Geology
of the Portland
(Bedrock and Quaternary history)
·
Terroir
of the Oregon Wine Country- a field
trip to study and taste the relationship between geology, soils and wine
Also planned is a
full day of conference, including talks and posters (PNW Geology, amongst other
topics). Immediately following the
conference, PSU will host a banquet and wine tasting event at the Simon Benson
House, a beautiful Queen-Anne style home moved to the PSU campus in 2000. Housing for the conference will be reserved
at the University Place Hotel for $69.00/night.
If you would like to present a talk or poster, or simply have further
questions, please contact Dr. Scott
Burns at (503) 725-3389 or email burnss@pdx.edu. More information will be provided in the
winter and spring newsletters, including registration packets.
On a side note,
this is the third year the Section conference will have been held on the “West Side” of the lower 48. As much as we love the coastal field trips,
it is time to move EAST. Idaho? Eastern Washington? Eastern Oregon? Please consider volunteering to host the 2008
conference. Contact Ron Metzger at mailto:rmetger@socc.edu if you may be interested.
Catch up—Anchorage,
AK, May 2006
The GSA Cordilleran Section Meeting
Cathy Connor, University
of Alaska Southeast, Juneau
The Geological Society of America’s Cordilleran
Section annual meeting was held May 8-10, 2006, in Anchorage in with the Pac Section American Association Petroleum Geologists and Western
region Society of Petroleum Engineers.
The meeting was well attended by scientists from both the United States and Canada, and petroleum geologists.
There were interesting geologic sessions on the origin and evolution of
Northern Cordilleran pericratonic terranes that comprise much of the Alaskan
Interior, the Yukon and interior British Columbia. These
repeatedly metamorphosed rocks are revealing their origins through U-PB dates
on zircon minerals at the Stanford USGS SHRIMP ion microprobe. A
Brooks Range Geology session honored Gil
Mull, and other sessions about Alaska Volcanoes featured Mt. Augustine
and other heavily instrumented volcanoes wired up and under analysis. USGS
geologist Charlie Bacon was able to
date a very young granite (18 ka) on Mount
Veniaminof volcano using
SHRIMP. Other sessions featuring Alaska’s
glaciers and their ongoing disappearance, accreted terranes and Cordilleran
reconstruction were interwoven with sessions of interest to petroleum
geologists. A field trip to Prudhoe Bay
revealed the ongoing leak to participants learning about the Trans Alaska
Pipeline and Arctic Oil fields. Field trips to Denali
National Park, Prince William Sound,
the Kenai Peninsula, the Talkeetna Mountains and a walking tour around Anchorage's earthquake
Park were all
well-attended.
Geoscience education sessions featured Alaska's MAPTEACH and EDGE projects, both
aimed at getting rural secondary science students and their teachers to
incorporate the use geospatial data in their classes through the use of GPS
receivers and GIS. University
of Alaska Fairbanks Professor Catherin Hanks Chaired a Geoscience
Education and Public outreach session that reviewed challenges and successes in
drawing Alaska Natives into university geoscience programs.
Following GSA, seismologists, geodescists, structural geologists and
educators drove east of Anchorage
along Turnagin Arm to the American
Geophysical Union CHAPMAN Conference held at Alyeska, May 11-14, 2006, on
the Active Tectonics and Seismic Potential of Alaska. Many interesting talks
and posters were presented about the partitioning of stress and strain across Alaska, especially as a
result on the ongoing collision of the Yakutat Block. The high school students
of Cordova are involved with the St. Elias Erosion/Tectonics Project (STEEP)
project that is looking at the active uplift in the St Elias Orogen in southern
Alaska. They
have been identifying land features created by uplift following the great
Alaska Earthquake of 1964. Senior USGS scientist George Plafker reviewed the post-1964 earthquake on the ground
research and brought attendees up to date on progress in understanding great
subduction zone earthquakes, especially the recent Sumatra 2004 event. A field
trip to Seward to view 1964 tsunami setting ending with an exploration of the
salt marsh record near Portage, AK, provided a rich environment for discussions and
understanding of the mammoth tasks yet to be completed in gaining understanding
of the active tectonics in the United
States’ largest state.
Catch up—Bellingham,
WA, June 2006
NAGT Pacific Northwest Section
Meeting
Davene Meehan, OEST Coordinator, and
Ralph Dawes, Wenatchee Valley
College
The 2006 Pacific
Northwest Section conference was hosted by Western Washington
University (WWU) in Bellingham,
Washington. The conference
kicked off with a social gathering the evening of June 21st. On
their deck overlooking Bellingham
Bay, Bob Christman and his wife Bess
generously served homemade wine and hors d’oeuvres. The next day, 30
eager participants boarded vans for the first field trip, a tour led by Scott Babcock (WWU) across the western
North Cascades and up the Skagit River to its gorge above the town of Newhalem.
At
each stop, we examined the deformed and metamorphosed rocks and discussed
exotic terranes, faulting, strain features, and metamorphism. At one such
stop, we examined a talc-rich schist surrounded by a “black wall” of biotite
and other concentric layers of minerals. This mineralized pod was metamorphosed
from ultramafic rock that has a probable mantle origin of pre-Late Cretaceous
age. We also heard some recent economic history of the talc deposit. It
provided a source of income for a local commune, who used it for grinding rice,
among other things. Then concerns about possible asbestos content stopped the
use of talc in food processing.
After lunch, we
continued along the spectacular North
Cascades Highway, examining both bedrock geology
and Quaternary geology. The Skagit Gorge itself is part of the evidence of
drainage reversal and stream capture of the Skagit River
during the Pleistocene Epoch. The steep-sided, narrow, rock-walled gorge has
been part of the main stem of the Skagit
River only since stream
capture occurred as a result of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet advance, which
reversed the drainage upstream. Between Newhalem and Marblemount we stopped to
look at a volcaniclastic lacustrine deposit. Apparently, these deposits record
a temporary lake on the Skagit
River when it was dammed
by a landslide. During that time the cataclysmic eruption of Mt. Mazama
in Oregon blanketed the slopes above the Skagit with ash, which then washed down into the lake.
This provides an age for the lake and shows that the eruption and erosion of
the Mazama ash was not a simple process. The trip concluded with a look at
glacial drift near the town of Concrete, and
a view of an extensive andesite flow from Mt. Baker.
The geology and mountain vistas were spectacular, and Scott Babcock was a
superb guide.
On Friday, June
23rd, participants boarded the vans and headed for the ferryboat dock for the
second excursion, a trip to Lopez and Fidalgo
Islands in the San Juan archipelago, led by Liz Schermer and Ned Brown (WWU). On this tour, we examined ocean floor rocks that
were tectonically juxtaposed along the continental margin, 125 to 84 Ma. Stops
included 
the
“world’s best pillow basalts,” which were scoured and polished by the Vashon
Lobe ice sheet, at Richardson on Lopez Island.
On Fidalgo Island, we were allowed into a quarry to
look at some well-exposed examples of accreted terrane. There we examined
folding, localized shear zones, and mineral veins in sedimentary and volcanic
rocks of ocean-floor origin, trying to see through the veil of metamorphism and
deformation to understand the history of the rocks. The interpretation of these
rocks and structures in the San Juan Islands,
especially what they mean in terms of tectonic and accretionary processes, has
met with controversy. Ned and Liz were models of scientific behavior in
carefully showing and discussing the evidence with the field trip participants.
Their expertise was impressive.
Saturday was the
day for talks. Invigorated after the field trips, participants engaged in
presentations concerning teaching methodologies, diversity integration in Earth
Sciences, volcanic activity on Mt. Baker and Mt.
St. Helens, and
groundwater quality in dairy farm country that is gradually turning into
housing developments. Presentations were followed by a barbeque by the shore of Lake Whatcom, where a valiant attempt
was made to eat all the food and drink all the beverages. This was a chance to
socialize, review the two main field trips, and conspire to arrange the next
PNW NAGT annual meeting, realizing, once again, that there would be no point in
trying to match this year’s meeting. Each meeting breaks its own new ground.
Sunday was the
final day of the conference. Maury
Schwartz led a field trip exploring the coastal geology of the Bellingham area, showing
how shoreline processes affect not only the rocks and sediments, but the people
who live near the shore.
All told, section
members had a great time at our annual conference. We met, schmoozed,
ate, learned geology in the field and in the lecture hall, debated, relaxed,
and had an all-around outstanding time!
Web Page
Author: Cassandra Strickland (cstrickland@yvcc.edu)
Web Master: Jennifer Thomson (Jennifer.Thomson@mail.ewu.edu)
