Structural Analysis
We have been teaching geoscience field courses at the IUGFS since 1949. During that 70+ year history, more than 7,000 students from over 300 universities have taken our courses.
Alumni routinely credit IUGFS as a key educational experience for their career success.; The top IUGFS experiences cited for career success are:
- Developing critical thinking skills to evaluate multiple working hypotheses and make independent decisions based on the available data;
- Integrating different aspects of the geosciences to solve complex problems;
- Thinking in 3- and 4-dimensions;
- Developing time management and project management skills;
- Applying the scientific method;
- Learning and/or refining geoscience skills.
The Field Station is located in Cardwell, Montana, which sits in the valley of the Jefferson River in the Tobacco Root Mountains. Our location in the Rocky Mountains is unique with remarkably diverse geology spanning 3.5 Ga of Geologic history. Rocks immediately around the IUGFS include Archean gneisses and schists, Proterozoic and Phanerozoic sedimentary rocks, Cretaceous-Tertiary intrusive and extrusive igneous rocks, and Neogene sedimentary rocks that are barely lithified.