Field Geology Education: Historical Perspectives and Modern Approaches - GSA Special Paper 461

Field education has historically occupied a central role in
undergraduate geoscience curricula, often starting with class specific weekend field trips and progressing to a capstone summer field course or “camp” at the conclusion of undergraduate coursework. Over the past century, countless geoscience
students have honed their field credentials through immersion
in the techniques of geologic field mapping as part of a six to eight-week summer field course. Traditionally, field camp
has been required for graduation by many college geoscience
departments, and nearly 100 field camps are currently offered
by accredited American universities and colleges (King, 2009).
However, many geoscience programs in the past few decades
have moved away from traditional geologic fieldwork (e.g.,
bedrock mapping and stratigraphic analysis) and toward
applied geology (geophysical remote sensing, laboratory based geochemical analyses, and environmental assessment, to
highlight a few examples). As a result, many geoscience programs have questioned the importance of fi eld instruction in
the undergraduate curriculum (Drummond, 2001; AGI, 2006).
This volume resulted from a cascade of meetings, field forums,
and conference sessions that focused on the supposed decline
of the importance of field geology, and the apparent erosion of
field experience in recently graduated geoscience students, as
perceived by many professionals.