Combining a historical geology project with a campus student organization's fundraising efforts

Journal of Geoscience Education, Sep 2003 by Guertin, Laura A, Nguyen, Catherine

ABSTRACT

Combining a classroom, activity with the goals of a campus student organization can promote active learning for the enrolled students, the campus and local community. A service-learning project in a general education geoscience course encourages stronger student enthusiasm and a vested interest towards the success of the project. Undergraduate students enrolled in historical geology are required to present summaries of geologic time periods and fossil samples during the Change Thru Geologic Time project, a service-learning activity at Penn State University Delaware County. Attendees at the event are asked to donate change to a student organization's fundraising efforts for pediatric cancer patients, their families, and innovative pediatric cancer research. The success of this event demonstrates that a common historical geology class assignment requiring students to scale geologic time over a certain distance can be modified to serve as an educational showcase and a fundraiser for a campus student organization.

Keywords: Education - Undergraduate; Geochronology

INTRODUCTION

The 4.6-billion years of Earth's history is a difficult concept for students to comprehend. Typical assignments relating to the geologic time scale include asking students to scale geologic time to something more familiar to them such as their age, the distance between two cities, even the length of a song. Students may create their own individual metaphor for geologic time, then scale events in earth's history to their own metaphor (Ritger and Cummins, 1991). Students may learn geologic time through an inquiry-based project in the field to reconstruct the regional geologic history (Thomas, 2001).

These assignments typically are written down for students, and students supply the instructor with a written response. However, with the visual nature of the field of geology and with students being stronger visual learners, an effective way to understand geologic time is through a visual representation. Students may be shown visual models to compare to the age of the Earth and significant geologic events, such as spacing the timescale to the length of a classroom, or by comparing the occurrence of events in geologic time to the length of clothesline held across the classroom (Richardson, 2000). Professors may use visual representations of the geologic time scale, such as a 500-sheet roll of toilet paper (Duex, 1991) to a yearly planning calendar (Everitt et al., 1996). By having students "map" the time scale, students can place Earth's past events in perspective.

This type of visual representation of the geologic time scale nas been developed one step further and assigned as a class project in conjunction with a fund-raising effort by a student organization on the Penn State Delaware County campus. Change Thru Geologic Time has students map the time scale and present summaries for various geologic periods and fossil samples to the campus and local community.

THE COURSE AND THON

Penn State Delaware County (PSUDE) is located outside of Philadelphia and is part of the Commonwealth College in the Pennsylvania State University system. The campus is primarily a two-year campus, with students starting their general education requirements and initial major courses at this location before transferring up to the Penn State University Park campus or to another university. In Spring 2002, GEOSC 021, "Biodiversity and Earth History," was offered for the first time at PSUDE. The course has a lecture-based format with no accompanying laboratory session. To get students excited and to have them invest their time and energy into learning historical geology, co-author Guertin wanted to develop a class project that would motivate the students to not only learn but to educate and share with others their new knowledge. Guertin made contact with co-author Nguyen, the student president for the PSUDE chapter of THON, to collaborate and develop a service-learning project to showcase student geological knowledge and assist in THON's fundraising efforts.

THON, a dance marathon held at Penn State University Park campus, is the largest student-run philanthropy in the world. Funds collected through the dance marathon provide comprehensive care and monetary support for pediatric cancer patients and their families while promoting innovative pediatric cancer research at the Penn State Children's Hospital in Hershey, PA. The Penn State Delaware County chapter of THON conducts a variety of fundraisers, and in 2002 the campus raised over $13,000 to contribute to the total 2002 THON fundraising amount of $3,613,178.61.

THE PROJECT

Service-learning projects can be designed for introductory-level science courses with an assessment tool for student learning (Francek, 2002; Bixby et al., 2003). This is the objective Guertin had in mind while designing Change Thru Geologic Time. The course syllabus started with a statement that, "one of the goals with this course is for everyone to understand the basic concepts of biodiversity and earth history. In this case, the Change Thru Geologic Time project will help you understand the concept and scale of time on geology." The project was slated to use the gymnasium to scale geologic time to a path. The last two pages of the syllabus in Guertin s GEOSC 021 class detailed the requirements for the project, so students knew what was expected of them from day one.