Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

River Camp

River Camp’s week-long curriculum, titled “When Rivers Move,” was collaboratively developed by Doug Edmonds (DEAS) and Co-PI Meredith Park-Rogers (Associate Professor, School of Education). They worked closely with a team of Earth Science and Science Education PhD students at Indiana University, including Qiu Zhang and Esther Kataate Namakula from the School of Education, as well as Harrison Martin, a recently graduated DEAS PhD student, and Jake Gearon, a current DEAS PhD student. Aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards, this curriculum not only imparts scientific concepts and facts but also emphasizes the application of scientific thinking in students’ everyday lives. A total of 26 campers (5 from diverse backgrounds) participated in the 2023 event.

 

River Camp - SOE

IU Paleontology Collection Exhibit

The Indiana University Paleontology Collection (IUPC) collaborated with the Zooarchaeology Collection and IU Collections to put on a year-long exhibit on shells and reefs in their new exhibit hall in the McCalla Building on the IU Bloomington campus. The focus was on the Stotter Collection, a largely Australasian collection of marine molluscs and corals donated to Indiana University by an alumnus.

Our departmental Paleontology and Zooarchaeology Collections Manager Jess Miller-Camp reported that the exhibit is wildly popular with visitors. The room it formerly inhabited will now be the designated interdepartmental collaborative science exhibit room.

 

IU Paleontology Collection

Science Fest

PhD students Elizabeth M. Sherrill and Sayan Das, and Senior Lecturer Cody Kirkpatrick organized Science Fest with the help of many volunteers among staff and students on October 22nd, 2022. The fantastic weather brought a never-ending crowd to marvel at numerous displays and activities, for example at the new stations “Tree Time” (developed by PhD student Owen Madsen) and “Clouds, Tornadoes, and Pressure” (developed by undergraduate student Ethan Steward and PhD student James Ryan).

 

Science Fest 2024

Educating for Environmental Change

Half a dozen of our department’s faculty are involved in the high-profile outreach program Educating for Environmental Change (EfEC) where one-day workshops for teachers complement intensive three-day summer teacher professional development programs. Especially noteworthy is the geoengineering workshop that was organized by Assistant Research Scientist Paul Goddard and Assistant Professor Ben Kravitz. 

 

Educating for Environmental Change