2002 NAGT Neil Miner Award: John Shelton

Journal of Geoscience Education, Mar 2003

Citation of John Shelton, for the National Association of Geoscience Teachers 2002 Neil Miner Award, delivered by Dr. Ivan P. Colburn, Professor of Geology, Emeritus, Department of Geological Sciences, California State University, Los Angeles. Delivered at the NAGT-GSA luncheon on October 27, 2002, in Denver, Colorado.

I am honored to be here today among my fellow earth science teachers to offer my citation for the Neil Miner Awardee, John Shelton. In that context let me say there are many excellent earth science teachers working today and many, which in the past, have contributed greatly to building a solid foundation for earth science teaching. Today's Neil Miner Awardee, John Shelton, is one who has made significant contributions to that foundation. those of you who have used John's collection of kodachrome slides to illustrate your lectures, or have used his pictures to illustrate your textbooks know and appreciate the value of the geologic features John has captured on film.

Frank Press, President Emeritus of the National Academy of Sciences and a former teacher of undergraduate geology for 25 years as well as co-author of the widely used undergraduate geology textbook, Earth said in support of John's nomination for the Neil Miner Award, "I, along with countless teachers and authors owe John a great debt for the educational materials he made available over the years slides, photos, his book Geology Illustrated, together with detailed explanations and responsive answers to questions that arose." He goes on to say, "I remember visiting him in his home and searching his files for illustrations for our book, asking for all sorts of advice and help which he graciously provided." Many other earth science and geology teachers who wrote in support of John's nomination made similar comments.

I trust you will agree that John's work as Chief Science Advisor on the AGI-Encyclopedia Britannica Earth Science Film Series that gave us, Why Do We Still Have Mountains?, Rocks That Form On The Earth's Surface, The Beach - A River of Sand, How Solid Is Rock, and about 15 others, significantly improved our ability as earth science teachers to communicate the dynamics of earth processes and to illustrate the significant role that geologic time plays in those processes.

John contributed many of his geological photos and teaching insights to the Earth Science Curriculum Project (ESCP). He was among those chosen to visit college campuses around the country and lend a hand in their adoption of the new Earth Science Curriculum. In so doing he was surprised to find that some departments were not making use of local outcrop geology in their instructional program. John urged them to To so and even took some of the faculty into their own back yards, so to speak, to show them how they could use their local geology to engage their students in the subject.

We, who teach geology in Southern California, are fortunate in having access to a wide variety of geologic terranes to augment our earth science instruction. John took full advantage of this resource while teaching at Pomona College by scheduling frequent field trips with his yearlong introductory course. He had us going into the field to study the Red Hill fault, the Glendora Volcanics, the San Antonio Canyon landslide, the San Andreas fault zone, the volcanic dikes, sea cliff, modern wave-cut platform, and elevated marine terraces on the nearby coast, and to the fossiliferous Pleistocene, Miocene, and Cretaceous strata in nearby hills. At these localities he helped us work through the evidence and reasoning that was essential to discover the sto recorded in the rocks. It was John's introductory geology course that led to my geologic epiphany and changed me from a student without much academic direction to one committed to becoming a geologist. Many of John's former students have expressed similar views with respect to the impact his teaching methods had on them.

John's philosophy of teaching has always been that it is in the field that we learn best what is real in geology and that we teach best from what we know through firsthand experiences. John's book, Geology Illustrated, embodies this theme. Indeed, the essence of the book is a sequence of visits to over 130 clearly photographed localities, at each of which the reader is involved in observations and analysis. This is what sets Geology Illustrated apart from many geology books written for the layman. As John says in the preface of his book, "I am more interested in engaging the reader in the quest for better understanding of the earth's record in rock than in setting forth the achievements of geology."

John graduated from Pomona College as a music and math major, but in his junior year he took Professor A.O. "Woody Woodford's introductory geology course. Two years later, John decided he wanted more geology so Woody suggested he go to Yale for catch-up and graduate work in geology.

During WWII John and Woody worked together for the Strategic Minerals Branch of the U.S. Geological Survey. During this time they became well acquainted.