Category: Academics
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A Flood of Fun: The W&M Geology Department Field Trip on the James River
Our Fall Geology Department field trip set out from Williamsburg to central Virginia, and the James River for a geological float trip down the river. The autumn weather was close to perfect, and our crew of 30+ students were ready for a fluvial adventure. We camped at Hatton Ferry, pitching our tents on a patch…
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Snow on Eclogite: W&M Geology in Norway
We’ve just finished our first William & Mary Geology 310 course to Norway. For 11 days, 16 students and two Geology faculty trekked around and over the Lofoten Islands. This post highlights the last half of our trip. On Friday, May 26th we took our longest road trip from our base in Henningsvær journeying west…
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Skerries and Moraines: W&M Geology in Norway
The Geology 310 course has been in Norway for nearly a week, and we are enjoying the diverse terrain of the Lofoten Islands. The weather has been suitably pleasant, it is downright mild by Arctic standards with an ever-changing mixture of clouds, bits of sun, and only a few spots of light rain (thus far).…
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North by Northeast to Norway: W&M Geology in the Lofoten Archipelago
W&M just finished its graduation celebration, and, as is a yearly tradition in the days after graduation, the Geology Department’s Regional Field Geology course (GEO 310) is off. This year we are headed in a different direction – as we’re traveling north by northeast to Norway, and we’ll be north of the Arctic Circle in…
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Explorations in Time-Depth Space: The Earth Structure & Dynamics Field Trip 2017
The Earth Structure & Dynamics class field trip rolled west from Williamsburg to the Blue Ridge Mountains on a near perfect early spring weekend in late March. Once again it was time for our annual class field trip to examine rocks and structures in the field and make sense of the Appalachian orogen. On the…
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Oman’s Geological Triple Point
Qantab is a village at the eastern edge of the Muscat metropolitan area, it’s hemmed in by steep rocky hills, and flanked by a broad strand that faces out to the Gulf of Oman. It is one of my favorite spots in Oman, and I recently visited Qantab with my research students on a Spring…
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Over Nottoway Falls
Another glorious February weekend, and I was off, once again, to the field with my research students. On this trip we returned to the Falls of the Nottoway River to obtain more measurements and complete our mapping of this awesome exposure in the middle the Southside Virginia Piedmont. We brought a small friend with us,…
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Power-washing the Paleozoic Petersburg Pluton
300 million years ago, vast quantities of magma intruded the Earth’s crust deep beneath what would one day become Richmond, Virginia. The magma that reached the surface fed a legion of volcanoes which no doubt erupted their fiery wrath over Ol’ Virginny, but much of that magma crystallized at depth, forming granite with its distinctive…
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20 Years of Teaching Structural Geology at William & Mary
‘Tis the season for grading final exams. Once the grading is complete, it’ll be time to determine who’s been naughty or nice, and dole out final course grades. In the Fall of 1996 I started teaching at William & Mary, and nearly every year for the past two decades I’ve taught a structural geology course.…
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What a Difference a Day Makes: The Fall 2016 Geology Department Trip to Virginia’s Eastern Shore
The Geology Department successfully completed its Fall 2016 Departmental Trip to Virginia’s Eastern Shore last weekend, but the difference between Friday and Saturday were striking. On Friday afternoon we rolled off campus amidst bright sunshine, warm temperatures, and a gentle wind from the East. We were bound for Virginia’s Eastern Shore — the southern end…
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On the Rocks – A Day at Nottoway Falls
In August, I described a set of cascades that form a major knickpoint on the Nottoway River in the Southside Virginia Piedmont. Last Saturday, my Structural Geology Seminar spent a day on the rocks studying the geology of this expansive outcrop. The outcrop we focused on is the uppermost cascade which exposes ~2,000 m2 of…
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Let It Rain
I’m teaching Weather, Climate, & Change (pdf) – a COLL 100 course – to 40 enthusiastic students who are in their first semester at W&M. Nearly every day in class, I play the Song of the Day — it’s a musical interlude intended to add some rhythm to class (literally), and the song lyrics connect,…
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The Long and Winding Road: The Geology 310 Field Course 2016
I’ve just returned from our 2.5-week field course in the Southwestern United States. The 2016 version of Geology 310 started and finished in Las Vegas, making a 3,200 km (2,000 mile) loop across the Basin & Range and Colorado Plateau provinces. All together there were 27 of us, and we (and our gear) filled 3…
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4th Rock from the Sun: Human Exploration of Mars – the Planetary Geology Research Projects 2016
Forty years ago, in the summer of 1976, NASA placed two spacecraft in orbit around Mars and then safely got the Viking 1 and 2 landers to the surface. I was all of 8 years old, but have a distant memory of those the first images from the Martian surface being broadcast over the evening…
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A Hard Freeze in the Basement: The Earth Structure & Dynamics Field Trip 2016
The Earth Structure & Dynamics class field trip is an annual rite of spring; when early April arrives it’s time for our weekend trip to explore the geologic structures of the Piedmont and Blue Ridge regions. A week ago Saturday, we were rolling deep with 36 students and two TAs. We departed from Williamsburg on…
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Rock Music Oman
Oh man, what a time we had in Oman! We are back from our first William & Mary study abroad program in Oman. The course, entitled Natural History and Contemporary Culture of Oman (a.k.a. Rock Music Oman), was led by myself and Music Professor Anne Rasmussen. The course enrolled 15 intrepid students and we spent…
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Rabble with a Cause- W&M Geology at Menokin
Menokin is an 18th Century Georgian-style plantation house on Virginia’s Northern Neck, which was the residence of Francis Lightfoot Lee and Rebecca Tayloe Lee. Back in 1776 Francis Lightfoot Lee was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, but today his house lies partially in ruins, as much of the structure collapsed in the mid-20th…
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College 100 – A Name on the Wind
William & Mary’s class of 2019 is the first to embark upon the new College Curriculum. The new curriculum requires all students to complete a COLL 100 course during their first year at W&M. COLL 100 courses are 4-credit classes that are about big questions and big ideas — the significant concepts, beliefs and creative…