29 BOONE PICKENS SCHOOL OF GEOLOGY New Course: Introductory Geological Processes One of the most significant developments over the past year has been the development of a new introductory course for our declared freshmen majors, Introductory Geological Processes. This course is almost entirely run from the field; out of 16 weeks, 11 of them are in the field! The course includes three overnight field trips to (1) the Wichitas, (2) the Arbuckles and Ouachitas, and (3) the Slick Hills or (this coming fall) Black Mesa. Other trips include Oilton, the Oklahoma Geological Survey, Keystone Lake, the Cimarron River, oil well sites around Stillwater, hydrogeological sites, and Lake Carl Blackwell. The course includes introductory instruction in all key areas of physical geology, such as rocks and minerals, sedimentary processes, metamorphism, structural geology, paleontology, hydrogeology, geophysics, energy geoscience, and maps! Students use our new GPS-capable iPads to take notes, make sketches and field maps, and most importantly, learn to interpret what they see at the outcrop or other field area in the framework of simple, foundational processes. One of the most important and impactful outcomes of this class is the friendship and camaraderie that our incoming cohorts build through these experiences—where traditionally our majors are surrounded by engineers in Physical Geology, we are able to use this course to immediately immerse our incoming students in the material, with multiple faculty, among others who share their interests and goals. Our first cohort particularly enjoyed the soggy, cold trip to the Slick Hills, where we did a longer hike to the Blue Creek Canyon fault zone and taught them how to map geologic contacts and make interpretations about structural geology. We look forward to continuing this course in the future!
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