Oh, To Be Working Here Again! It Could Be You: Santa Barbara City College

This might seem a bit of a long narrative describing a job opening in the earth sciences, but this one has a special resonance with me. To the extent that I have had any success as a teacher of geology, I owe much to the Earth and Planetary Sciences department at Santa Barbara City College in southern California. My first job out of graduate school back in 1984 was that of a laboratory teaching assistant at SBCC. Despite the term "assistant", it was a full-time teaching gig, with the responsibility for six or seven labs every semester as well as working with their numerous field studies courses. As time went on, I was given a number of courses to teach. The experience has served me well for the past 28 years.

There was a culture of excellence at SBCC that continues to this day. Students emerge from the program with skills equivalent to 3rd and even 4th year baccalaureate scholars, including excellent field mapping and research skills. As far as I'm concerned, it's one of the flagship programs among community colleges in the American west.

With that background in mind, check out this job opening in the department. It's an incredible place to teach. We had a beach processes lab at the base of the hill, a fault scarp running through part of the campus, and some marvelous field exposures in the hills above campus. The facilities on campus are excellent. They run multi-day field studies courses in Death Valley and the Eastern Sierra Nevada, and summer courses across the western United States. They also have an extended field methods class that is conducted in the Mt. Pinos area and the Cuyama Badlands.
Although I haven't worked there in years, I know the department has continued their tradition of excellence. Information at https://jobs.sbcc.edu/postings/1785. The application deadline is February 6, 2017.

Why Geology and the Earth Sciences Count: Teaching at a Community College

So what was Geotripper doing providing advice on human relationships on a geology blog yesterday? Randy got it exactly right, I was teaching chemistry! Haven't you ever wondered what holds the world together, how a bunch of supermicroscopic atoms can stick to one another and form such beautiful rocks and minerals? A great many people might be interested in knowing, but feel intimidated by the level of knowledge seemingly required to understand such things. To understand a crystal, one needs to know of protons, electrons, neutrons, elements, and bonding. To fully understand an earthquake or a tsunami one needs some basic understanding of the behaviour of waves. To understand the twinkling of a star in the sky, one needs some grounding in the nature of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is a tall order, but not impossible. The knowledge is there for anyone to comprehend if they wish to...I will explain the specifics of our Dear Gabby advice at the end of this post.

Geology and the earth sciences occupy a special place in the academic universe. They are the very tangible examples of chemistry and physics at work in the real world. Not the strange world of atoms and smaller objects where Newtonian physics falls apart into strange new rules. Not the vastness of an unimaginably strange Universe. It is the ground beneath our feet, the flooding of a nearby river, the shock of an earthquake, the price of gasoline at the local pump. It is the prediction of next week's snowstorm, the drought of the next decade, and sea level rise in the next century. It is the planning for the end of an oil economy. An understanding of the earth sciences is critical to making the best choices in resource use and allocation in an overpopulated world.

National parks and monuments are not generally established because they preserve some aspect of physics and chemistry. If they don't preserve a historical battleground or unique plant or animal, they are there because something of geology is worthy of our interest and protection. We may photograph the bears, deer and squirrels that inhabit Yosemite, Yellowstone or Grand Canyon, but the meaning of the parks is in the rocks. The squirrels live everywhere, but the geysers, rock strata and gorges make these places unique. Communicating the meaning and value of these parks to society is prime concern of the park's interpretive rangers.

That brings us to the challenge. To be a geology/earth science major, one needs to be a real polymath, a Homo Universalis (look it up! I had to). It is generally recognized that the candidate needs to master calculus, physics and chemistry, usually in classes that has him or her competing directly with actual math, physics and chemistry majors. It is not the easiest major to pursue. In an ideal academic world, the geo-major would have prerequisites in all of these listed fields before ever setting foot in a physical geology course.

This is not feasible or possible in my world of the community college. A prerequisite like that would leave me with three or four students each semester (hmmmm....that's a thought). Our community colleges serve many constituencies and few of my students will actually end up as majors. They will become teachers, nurses, accountants, firefighters, small business owners and so on. They take a geology/earth science class for many reasons, but most often because it is one of the listed physical science lab electives they need for their general education requirements. Our goal is not to produce geologists and earth scientists (although it is nice when that happens), but to produce an informed community of educated citizens.

So, I have the challenge (and privilege) of assisting my students in understanding some basic principles in physics and chemistry without getting bogged down in aspects of the sciences that they won't need in order to understand introductory geology. Chemistry is covered in about 2 hours and 40 minutes. The boiled down version of chemistry that I present would probably appall my colleagues down the hall, but they will have time to fix it when my students take a chemistry course a semester or two later. In the meantime, the students will have more than enough to try and understand; why not make it as memorable as possible?

They tell us we should not anthropomorphise inanimate objects like atoms (atoms don't "want" to do anything or "behave" in a particular way, they just act according to the laws of physics). But that sort of takes the fun out of explaining atomic activity.

So...atoms are in fact couch potatoes, in the sense that they exist and react in such a way as to maintain a stable low energy state. This generally involves having a specific number of electrons in the outer energy shells. They achieve the stable outer shells by giving up or taking in electrons from the local environment, i.e. from or to other nearby atoms. This leaves atoms in an ionized state, meaning they now have a positive or negative charge. The oppositely charged particles are attracted to each other to form an ionic bond.

Other atoms achieve stability by merging their orbiting electron shells and sharing the fast moving particles. Such outer-shell electrons are called valence electrons, and the bond is a covalent bond.

In some minerals like gold, silver or copper, the electrons flow freely throughout the solid and are not tied to any specific atoms, a so-called metallic bond (ever wondered what electricity actually is?).

And as Randy points out, the noble gases already have filled outer electron shells, so they don't react or bond with other atoms at all. These elements include helium and argon gas. A moment of truthfulness here: I was actually thinking of the very weak Van der Waals bonds, but the example of the noble gases works much better as a metaphor of non-commitment!

The next step is to understand how these bonds lead to the formation of the crystals (and crystalline solids) we find scattered throughout the crust of the earth (such as the amethyst quartz above). I love crystals, not for spiritual new age reasons, but for the assurance they provide us that there is order in the Universe. They are beautiful reminders of the accomplishments of atomic couch potatoes seeking that nirvana of the lowest energy state possible.

Don't Let Them Fall Through the Cracks! An Accretionary Wedge...

The Wedge is back! This month's new Accretionary Wedge, hosted at Geology Happens, is asking what we geologists are up to:

"Not everything I am studying ends up in a published paper, well actually nothing I study ends up in a published paper. Sometimes my HS students hear about my adventures and sometimes I write a blog post, but mostly it is just for me.

This AW is to share your latest discovery with all of us. Please let us in on your thoughts about your current work. What you are finding, what you are looking for. Any problems? Anything working out well?"

This seems a great opportunity to find out what kinds of things one can do as a geologist, and I hope lots of bloggers and readers out there are responding. As my readers must probably know by now, I teach geology at a community college. I've talked many times about the joy and motivations of being a teacher of geology (here, here, here, and very recently, here), but I don't think I've said much about the day-to-day grind.

As a professor at a community college, I wear a number of hats. Unlike many four-year universities, we are oriented more towards teaching rather than research. The school loves to tout our research if we pursue it, but it is not expected of us. Consequently, the teaching load is larger than it would be at other schools (15 hours a week of instruction time is considered full-time, plus required office hours). A teaching overload is not unusual. I teach classes in physical and historical geology, geology of California, and a distance-learning course called "Introduction to Geology". Laboratory sections are taught as part of the first two classes. Because geology is such a field-oriented science, I teach several field courses each semester, with an extended five-day trip to the Cascades, Death Valley, or the eastern Sierra Nevada, plus a number of day trips to Yosemite, the Coast Ranges, or the Sierra Nevada Mother Lode. The summer usually includes a two week exploration of the American southwest, or Pacific Northwest. If you have read my blog for any period of time, you know that taking students into the field is my favorite part of teaching.

I spend lots of time grading lab reports and tests, which I don't particularly enjoy, but responding to the student's work is one of the most important things I do; in a classroom people can hide in the back and not participate verbally, but their written work and my response is an important direct line of communication.

My job includes other responsibilities. As part of a philosophy of shared governance, we are generally expected to serve on committees, such as Academic Senate, Curriculum, Petitions, Scholarship, and so on. We participate in department and division meetings. All professors, full-time and part-time, are periodically evaluated, which includes peer review, so we spend time sitting in on other prof's courses, and providing advice and guidance. We are also involved in the hiring processes of both professors and administrators.

Finally, although it is not always spelled out in our career announcements, we are ambassadors for our school. We visit elementary school classrooms to talk to children about our work, we give presentations on geologic topics to the community (I talked about the Haiti earthquake a few months ago), and we provide expertise to local governments. I get visits all the time from people who wish an explanation of the strange rock specimens that they have discovered.

Community colleges fill many roles. We provide a bridge for high school graduates who are unsure of what path they want to follow into the future (some data suggests that our students may change majors six times or more) and we are also a cheaper alternative to high tuition universities (our transfers often do very well). We have many reentry students as well, people who need a new career after being laid off or divorced, or need to develop new skills for a changing workplace. And some students, well, they have a life-long love of learning. We are trying to make sure no one with an educational need is falling through the cracks (I had to justify the title somehow...).

So that's what I do, if you have ever wondered (no doubt all of three or four of you), but if it sounds like something you might like to do as a career, you will need to earn at least a master's degree in geology or related science. Most geology departments at California's 112 community colleges are fairly small, so full-time openings are relatively uncommon, especially in difficult budgetary times (like right now, for instance). On the other hand, the average age of us professors is, well, not so young, and many retirements can be expected in the next decade or so.

It is not very often that a newly minted college graduate scores a full-time position as a professor. Many people teach part-time at several schools for a time, or like me, work in a related capacity for a few years (I know some of my old colleagues at Santa Barbara City College occasionally look in on the blog: thanks from the bottom of my heart for the wonderful opportunity you provided me back in the 1980's!).

Teaching at a community college is a great career choice. I'll never be financially wealthy, but I have had a rich life. I have never regretted it for a moment.

Interested in Teaching Earth Science/Geology in California?

I've posted the current teaching opportunities in the California Community College system over at my blog for the Far West Section of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, Teaching the Earth Sciences. Forgive me for shamelessly plugging the site every so often: It doesn't get a lot of traffic, but I think it has great deal of useful information available on teaching and geo-touring in the California-Nevada-Hawaii region. They sell an excellent selection of guidebooks, with the proceeds going to a scholarship fund for earth science students in the region.

Please also catch this important post on the need for support for a change in attitude by the University of California towards the earth sciences in their admission requirements. Earth Science has always taken a back seat to chemistry and physics, and yet is most vivid example of chemistry and physics at work in the real world. We need to support the teaching of the earth sciences at the secondary level.

A bit more Student Humor...

Having gone into the old archives, having been reminded of how long I've been doing this, I offer another snippet of student art; this was from the very first class I taught, period. I was working as a laboratory assistant at my alma mater with a newly minted BA in Geology (this was 1981), and I hadn't really decided what I was going to do next. Another nearby college, which did not have a dedicated science department or majors, still needed to teach some basic science courses, and they wanted to know if anyone at my school wanted to moonlight for a semester. None of the professors was available, but the school twisted some regulations to allow me to be the teacher of an Introduction to Geology course. I had 8 or 9 thoroughly disinterested students in a night class that I thought lasted from 7 to 9.

I was nervous. I begged my professor to let me copy his lecture notes and I did so thoroughly, practically memorizing them word for word. I held on to those notes like a security blanket during my lectures, hoping and praying the students wouldn't ask any questions. But somehow that first night I made it to 9:00 o'clock and told the students they could go. They looked at each other quizzically and got up and left. This went on for weeks. The last week of class, I looked at the grade sheet, and saw that the class was scheduled from 7:00 to 10:00! And not one student ever said anything about it!

I learned a lot about teaching that semester, but the most important thing I learned is that I could actually teach. Maybe not the most brilliant academic mind, but I could communicate the interest and excitement about the earth that I myself had. And I especially liked field tripping. The comic above was one of the two pieces of paper a student turned in at the end of the field trip along the San Andreas fault at Cajon Pass in southern California. No notes, just a pair of comics.

He passed, but barely.

It can't be....

Modesto often makes the top of the lists of the worst towns in the United States to live in, for reasons that are not always clear to me...I've seen a lot of places on my travels that I wouldn't wish on anyone. One of those books complained that the best thing about Modesto that anyone can say is how close it is to other, more wonderful places like the Sierra Nevada, Yosemite, the Mother Lode, the Coast Ranges, and the Bay Area. I've always considered that an advantage. Imagine living in a place that you can visit the snow, but not worry about shoveling it off your driveway. Imagine living in a place where you can visit a temperate rainforest, but if it is raining, you can drive home to clear skies. Sure, we get the tule fogs, and it is hot, dry and dusty in summer, but altogether Modesto is not a bad place to live.

We are building a long-needed Community Science Center that will house the biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy and geology departments as well as a nice museum, a planetarium and an observatory. We are near the end of the architectural planning and the subject of office choices came up, and the idea of seniority was floated about. With the retirement of our astronomy professor this semester after 35 years of teaching, that senior person...was me. OMG.

I am finishing my 20th year of teaching at the college. TWENTY years! I don't know how that much time passed so quickly. I was the young kid in the department when I started, surrounded by veterans of 25 or 35 years or more. One by one they've retired, and new people arrived. I was once the one with the young kids at department functions, but now the young kids belong to others. My kids are pursuing their careers and degrees.

Well, at least I am not the division curmudgeon yet. There are still some math professors that have been there longer than me....

Today's comic is a picture of me drawn by one of my students back at the beginning: a thinner soul with wiry long hair, and a great attitude about the grading he had to finish. Just like the pile I should be working on right now.....

The Best Job in the World: A Teacher of Geology

Some reaction around the geoblogosphere about the ranking of "geologist" as the 30th best career out of 200 various fields...dairy farming and lumberjacking rank the lowest. Perusing the list, I don't find my personal field specifically listed; although I think of myself as a geologist, I am actually a college professor who teaches geology, and "professor" isn't listed separately, although "Teacher" is listed at #127. On the other hand, "Mathematician" is numero uno on the list, and it specifically points out that many mathematicians work in an academic setting.

Personally? I think I have one of the best jobs on the planet. I have had the privilege of introducing thousands of people to the world of geology and earth science over the last twenty years, both in the classroom and in the field, including a few far-flung locations overseas. Yes, there are moments of administrative/bureaucratic nonsense I could do without, but these things do not dominate my time. State funding cuts threaten our campus, but either we support education in our state or we go down the economic tubes, so I think there will a reasonable assurance of job security for the foreseeable future. It took me eight years of college (with economic-related breaks) to get the degree that allowed me to seek my job, but it has paid off with 24 years of an enjoyable career, with a hope of 20 more!

Then again, there is this....