Field geology develops and matures synthetic and conceptual thinking. It builds competence and self-confidence in working outdoors, independently and in groups, drawing inferences and conclusions from evidence, and trusting your own judgment and reasoning. Field camp also provides important opportunities for personal growth through travel and collaboration in a new environment.
Field camp develops deeper thinking about:
- interplay between vast spatial dimensions and deep time;
- developing a plan to collect data to test a hypothesis;
- inferring from incomplete data; and
- communicating and defending that inference, accounting for incompleteness and uncertainty.
GEOL 640 is a capstone course that is an outdoor laboratory for testing geologic concepts, interpret the rock and fossil record, visualize three dimensional geologic relationships, make and interpret geologic maps, and evaluate data used to make maps.