Page 14 - Eureka-2013

earthsci.carleton.ca

Earth Sciences

By Kristy Strauss

arleton’s earth sciences program When he started, Carleton was southwest, where they visited a meteor
Creaches out to all corners of the preparing to vacate its former location crater and hiked the Grand Canyon.
globe – from active volcanoes in Italy, on First Avenue and move to its present In 2011, Professor Claudia Schroder-
to soft and hard rocks in Hawaii. But site. ”Carleton was primarily a liberal Adams led a group of undergraduate
students in the program do not just arts college at the time,” he says, “The and graduate earth sciences students
study these areas from a classroom. sciences were taught but Carleton was to Antarctica, where they studied the
For decades, their education has gone best known for its journalism program. continent’s history and evolution of its
beyond classroom walls and into the There was only one room for geologists, ecosystems.
field—a vital component of the program. so there were four of us faculty Professor Keith Bell, another retired
Students travel all over the world members in one office,” he remembers, faculty member, remembers taking
studying the Earth, trying to understand adding that Carleton only had about 900 students to Italy to study active
its formation over billions of years, students at the time. “I didn’t really fully volcanoes. “When you’re in the field, you
and assessing what will become of its appreciate the smallness until we got are not simply professor and students.
future. bigger.” You’re all roughing it. You get to know
“Because of field work, we’re more of He smiles as he remembers taking the students well, and vice-versa.”
a family,” says Tim Patterson, an earth students on the second-year field course Earth sciences professor Brian
sciences professor who’s been teaching to Cobalt, Ontario, where students study Cousens says he has had fabulous
in the department for 25 years. “There’s the lakes and rocks surrounding active experiences with his students while
nothing like sitting around a camp fire, mines. Hooper recalls one exceptionally on field courses, and that the trips
and getting to know people beyond the hot day jumping into nearby Lake transform relationships between
classroom.” Temiskaming where the waves were professors and their students.
Ken Hooper, now 90 and a retired so huge due to tempestuous southerly “I think the advantage of spending
professor in the department, has fond winds that it felt like he was jumping large chunks of time with students is
memories of the program and Carleton. into the ocean. you really get to know them, and they
He arrived at the school in 1958 and The Cobalt trip is where students got get to know you,” Cousens says. “When
retired in 1988. Over his 30 years of their first taste of field work. As they you’re in a van with someone for five
teaching, he says he has seen both the continue through the program, they hours, you find out their idiosyncrasies
department and the university campus travel further afield. This past spring, and quirks. You can’t get that out of a
change. Professor Patterson took a group of lecture-based or lab-based class.”
third-year students to the American No matter where undergraduate

14 Summer 2013