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The Rise of Geoscience Education: Interview with Professor Steve Mattox · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Chris, how are you doing today?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing great.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: How are you doing, Jesse?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, I'm doing really well.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited for today's episode, to be honest with you.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: But before we get to that, let's do some brief introductions.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: You are Chris Bullheis, a nationally recognized Earth Science teacher from the great state of Michigan.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_02: And you are Jesse Remink, one of my former students, now a professor of geoscience at Penn State.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: And this is Planet Geo, a podcast where we talk about amazing aspects of our planet and why it matters to our everyday lives.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, this is uh this is an exciting week.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: We are interviewing Dr.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Steve Maddox this week.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: I can't wait.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: So Steve got his PhD in 1992 from Northern Illinois University.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: He hasn't always been a professor.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: He has a diverse working background.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: Some of his experience includes working for mining companies in Western Australia.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: Steve began teaching at Grand Valley in 1998 and has been an associate professor in the geology department since 2003.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: The other thing about Steve is he has a very long list of awards.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: In 2019, he received the Glenn Neemeyer Award for Service, which is the top honor that a professor at Grand Valley State can earn.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: In 2020, earlier this year, Steve was awarded the Michigan Association of State Universities Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year Award.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: So that's very impressive.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: And Steve has a long list of other awards, but this is a short podcast.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: So here we go.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's been it's certainly been an honor.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Short career, it goes fast.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it does.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: It does go fast.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, welcome to Planet Geo, Steve.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: And thanks for uh thanks for spending some time with us.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: We've got a bunch of questions.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: You have a really interesting and varied career in the geosciences, I would say, which is uh for me personally really interesting uh to see what what your sort of high-level take is on the geosciences and geoscience education.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: We've got a bunch of questions, and and Chris, I think we want to start with you.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: What do you what do you got for Steve?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Steve, I'd like to start off with just uh because I have a kind of moment like this in my own life.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: When did you decide to get into geology or geoscience?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: Was there an aha moment for you?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think there was.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's really maybe a confluence of two or three things.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Part of it is realizing I love to be outdoors.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was a Boy Scout.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't a very good Boy Scout, but I loved being outdoors and hiking and those kinds of things and camping.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: I loved science.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: I started in pseudoscience with things like UFOs and weird stuff like that, but then I started reading Carl Sagan.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really interesting transition right there.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: I want to hear more about that.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as soon as as soon as you start reading Carl Sagan, you realize how amazing science is.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: I had a supportive older brother who would take me to the public library in Indianapolis and had a big section, and I I pretty much read every science book.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I loved outdoors, I loved being science, but I was really going towards astronomy.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the funny sad thing was I wasn't that good of a student.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: So after my first second semester, first year, I got hammered by physics and calculus.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was like, oh, that's not so good.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh I went and I went to Colorado outward bound school that summer, and that part helped.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I came back from that with a lot of confidence.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, I took a geology class.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: So sort of my skill set jumped, and I realized, oh, there's this other science that lets you be outside to do science.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that was really the aha moment, sitting in a big gen ed class, physical geology.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: So and this was that I went to Indiana University, Purdue University at Indianapolis.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I have an IU geology degree.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: So do you tell this uh, you know, when you're teaching those classes nowadays, when you're on the other side of the table here, do you tell the story to your intro students?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I I I especially emphasize the part about getting hammered second semester, first year.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're not paying attention, it will happen to you.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: Cal calcan physics will get you, won't they?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, Steve, this is quite a transition.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: As we talked about in our Geo short last week, you have this long career in economic geology or in exploration geology, and that's quite a shift to, you know, award-winning professor at Grand Valley these days.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, what, you know, what kind of led to that shift?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: What led you away from the industry side of things and into the academic side of things?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we lived in Australia for two years.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: We enjoyed it, but we were looking for a change.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: We were expecting the first child.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so coming back to the States seemed like a pretty good idea.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So applied for numerous jobs.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: But really, the stepping stone was to move towards science education.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: I lived five years in Hawaii as I finished up my PhD.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: I worked as an interpretive ranger at Hawaii Volcanoes.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I started doing public education.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: We got a small grant, we wrote a teacher's guide to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, gave it to the teachers, and the teachers were like, This is great.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Can you teach me how to use it?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so we started running field trips for teachers to the national park, teaching them how to use the new guidebook.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that interaction with teachers was a big part.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And this was all before your uh your uh exploration experience.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: So there's the almost the constant flipping back and forth.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: When I wasn't a seasonal park ranger, I might work for a consulting company out of Honolulu and do water wells.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: I joked that it was hard to hold down a job.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've had like 20 different geology jobs.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, no, you're the jack of all trades here.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: You just can do you can do anything.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: I don't just there you go.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it was the interaction there.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and at North Dakota, we were working on a website called Volcano World that kind of still exists.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but that was early in the days of building websites to provide science content mostly to the public.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so that worked out well too.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: So when I applied for the job here at Grand Valley, you know, 20 years ago, there weren't that many people with science education backgrounds, and and mine was not, but I had I had done some things.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that that was the transition to science education.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so did you find the the transition to being a prof uh difficult or easy?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what was the biggest hurdle or what was the easiest thing that you came across moving from industry to academia?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: I I didn't find it difficult.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: And even now, I what I value and what I find really difficult is we have outstanding high school teachers, but even looking at the next gen standards, some of them are so demanding.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: I have to go and train myself in a specific area to address a next-gen standard.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like we were talking about assembly of North America.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure that many high school teachers would be able to dive right in and teach the assembly of North America.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I've been reading about it, thinking about understanding the science, and then how I can approach it to teach it in to uh undergraduates or high school.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I I'm not familiar, I'm not embarrassingly unfamiliar with next gen standards.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's the the so that that is an expectation in next-gen standards, is that high school students will understand the tectonic assembly of North America?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty close, yeah.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, really?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: That is surprisingly deep, actually.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: So your knowledge level you need to teach it is surprisingly deep.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so part of the job would be for me to think about how to approach and generate materials that people can use or train our students well enough that they could feel comfortable diving into something that deep.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay, interesting.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I I I keep pushing this point, but it's kind of interesting for me because I've I've been on the academic path, you know, basically since graduate school, but I've always had this really deep curiosity for the industry of geoscience and you know, what potential there might be out there in the in the sort of quote unquote real world, but the industry aspect of geoscience.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: So what what's like the from an a person who's been on both sides here, what's the the best change into what's the best part of academia and the worst part of academia?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: Or to flip it on its head, what's the best part of industry and the worst part of industry when you're comparing the two to each other?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Do you do you have like a real sense of what you like about one and dislike about the other?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think the industry was applying skills to solve a problem, recognize and learn geology in the field, apply all the things that have you've learned.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the downside was 28 days away from your family.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's the tough part.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the academia, the the the big plus is the students.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: We just have fantastic students at Grand Valley, and we get a good supply from the surrounding high schools, especially Hudsonville.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then to see the students go on and be successful um as educators or geologists and see them having a good life and enjoying their careers.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's the biggest plus.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: The downside of academia, I guess my time is limited.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: I can't do everything.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's the only downside.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's too fun, right?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: You want to be able to do everything you can't.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I want to touch on something that's off topic.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: Steve, you talked about you said something about the next gen standards, and you and I have seen the next gen standards change.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well, they weren't next-gen, but you've seen the high school standards change uh over the past 20 years a lot.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: How do you feel about where we are right now?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: Because I have a I have a real opinion on this.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't mind the next-gen standards.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think they are ambitious, they're different from what we expect when we train geologists.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think if we had a rigorous curriculum that addressed all of the next-gen standards, we wouldn't even have to worry about the students coming in to undergraduate programs.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: But currently there's a misalignment.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: What we expect or what we do in most of our college courses is different from what next gen uh expects of a high school teacher.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it's pretty rare that we can elevate the high school courses to the to the level of the undergrad geology.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I think the next gen standards have they've brought a rigor to the geosciences that we haven't ever had, not in my career, and I don't think ever, you know.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I I love them from that standpoint, but you also hit on something is the this disparity between the next gen standards.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, there's a there's a big focus on the earth sciences as a whole, right?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: Where you talk about climate and climate change and and uh environmental issues that you don't necessarily get in a physical geology class in college.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: So, how do you see that?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Can I interject a question along this?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Are the next gens, are these Michigan standards?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Are they national standards?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: What are we talking about here?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're national standards, and the states either adopt them in total as the national or they tweak them a little bit.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: So essentially, Michigan has its own science standards, but they look exactly like the national ones.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, okay.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: So is your sense that the high school standards are getting out over their skis a little bit here, or do the colleges need to catch up?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: I would almost say that the college classes in many ways provide a survey of geology.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: It may not be all the most important topics, and realize we kind of have those students for one class.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe doing climate, doing some environment things, uh, would be just as valuable as making sure they know about deserts and coasts and glaciers.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: Jesse, also, I think in answer to your question, these standards are rigorous to a point that Steve said that you know, you have to be really well educated to tackle these things.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a problem, too, is that we're not cranking out a lot of earth science teachers.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: Steve, you and I have talked about this reason with the degrees that are emphasized by the schools, they don't favor a specialization in geoscience or in biology now.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's this kind of general degree that you get where you can go ahead and teach any science.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: And it's this integrated degree.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so you get these people that are coming out, you know, ready to teach that they know a lot about or they know a little bit about a about everything.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: They don't know, they're not deeply educated in one thing.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: Steve, a while back you did research on a project with involving geoscience in the media.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, this goes back a little ways.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: This was in out of the newspaper, I think, if I'm correct.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so can you way way back then?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Ancient studies.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but it still applies.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: What what they found, I think, still has you know, you still media is media.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we did it about 10 years ago, and what prompted me, so National Science Foundation does this project called Science and Engineering Indicators.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I went and looked, they still do it.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: At least there was a report in 2020, fairly recently.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: And part of the report is on public attitudes and understanding.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm wondering what is the science that uh an average citizen is exposed to?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time, yes, you could get a paper newspaper delivered to your door.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I was looking for one to show Jesse so he'd know what they look like.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've never I've never really heard I've heard of this, but it's only in the movies.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: You're seeing such a piece of work.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: It came along with these phones that did that had little buttons on them, too, right?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: Don't humor this idiot, Steve.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Come on.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we I had a an earth science class with like a dozen good students, and what we did was we divvied up the newspaper, and I think we had to look in microfish or something, and we came up with a standard way of counting essentially science articles.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we had geology articles, weather, climate, astronomy, biology, biomed, chemistry, physics, and the environment.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we'd look at the number of the articles, the length in the inches of column length, number of pictures, and all that stuff.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: So let me just tell you the result.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And this is Grand Rapids, Michigan, uh mid-sized town.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, Moreno's in Michigan, which also does not have a very large geoscience industry native to Michigan.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's not, there's no mining companies really, you know, geoscience doesn't have a huge economic footprint there.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: So looking at that, um, if you turned it into full pages, over a year there were 318 full pages of science text with over 2,100 articles, 1,300 pictures, 3,380 graphs.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: So a tremendous amount of science information was being conveyed to the public uh through their local newspaper.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of it was, I think it's dominated by medical, dominated by the environment, which is often related uh to geology.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, then other things were tossed in.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: But if if you were interested, I think it was being provided uh in a reasonable way and in an accurate way, too.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I think also it highlighted to me when you when you shared this this study with me, which by the way, this is this is why Steve Maddox is Steve Maddox.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: What a cool project! You know, what a great idea, Steve.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, what this did was it really highlighted the importance too of Earth science, though, right, Steve?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, many of these things talked about our climate, our weather, our resources, the water that we have in the state of Michigan.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: So earth science really in the in the news had a really important role, didn't it?
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it was being presented, it was being covered.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's probably still being covered.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can think of the flooding and the dam breaking, um, PFOS.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's still being covered, and I think it still provides.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was I wanted to say enough information, but some information to get you started to understand the science in your community.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: So you don't have to answer this because I don't want to get you in hot water with your colleagues or anything like this, right?
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: But oh boy, here we go.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Get ready, but we gotta come back to the last question coming in.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: I just want to know, you know, when do you think a typical physical geology class is gonna change curriculum to reflect the the other parts of it?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the other parts of earth science is that you know, because we don't really deal with it's it's to me, it's it's kind of this old school mentality where we're not dealing with the new stuff that's coming in in earth science that everybody should know about.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, can you give a couple specifics like what you think what you mean by that, what should be covered and what shouldn't be covered there?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: For sure.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: I just think that we're not doing enough in a physical geology course that you know covers climate and climate change.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we're not doing enough to talk to cover not only how our resources form, but what those resources can do when they're used and mined and extracted and then burned or you know, utilized but for human consumption.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: We don't do enough with this, these important topics for everybody.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like what do you think, Steve?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, I agree.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think um we've fallen into this traditional pattern.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you picked up a textbook, it would march through those topics that we've marched through for 50 or 100 years.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And for many of the students, it's sort of your one shot at giving them key aspects.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I agree, everybody should cover climate.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Jesse, this is another science standard we're working on.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Unequal distribution of Earth's resources and the past conditions that made those.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you could think of um coal deposits in the Illinois basin, that would work, and trying to understand those, and how we that leads to unequal consumption and damage to the environment.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think instead of marching through those topics, yeah, maybe march through some of the big important things like I'm all for electric cars, but where's the lithium going to come from?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: And those kinds of factors.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: And also things like fracking, Steve.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I don't, you know, what does what does a does a geology class, uh intro 111 geology class, cover that kind of hot button topic right now?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: It would depend on the instructor.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think most of them would outline the the geologic setting and the technical aspects of what's going on with fracking.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: So you'd understand at least how it's being done.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: As far as disposal of fluids and those kinds of things, I think maybe in broadest terms, it might be covered.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: So to turn it around, Chris, I think the the smart way to do it is saying we're gonna do fracking.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: While we do it, we're gonna teach you about water and we're also gonna teach you about sedimentary rocks.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: Amen.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, you're talking about context.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: You're talking about a class that's titled Why What You Need to Know About the Earth.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, for for somebody who's not in this field.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: I just like Steve said, you know, this is the way we've been doing it for 50 years.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we need to keep up.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think it would still be attractive to students.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: I do too.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it I think it would still be a fine gateway to the second course.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think perhaps we're not doing a good job of telling people why earth science is important.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's the most important thing, whether it's the public or whether it's um students sitting in front of us in class.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I mean, this is the listen to Planet Geo.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't need to take this class, just listen to Planet Geo.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: This is the point of this podcast, right?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: No, seriously, this is uh I like this.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just all right, we got a project to work on.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: We'll make a new intra-level class.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just I love the idea of teaching fracking and also teaching teaching sedimentology.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: What do you got, Steve?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: What's this starting our list for topics?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, talk about lithium.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, most of the lithium comes from these really weird igneous rocks, right?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: They're like 0.001% igneous rock compositions, but you teach igneous petrology in the context of weird lithium-bearing granites.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I mean, I love the idea.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's great.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, Steve, you you and Chris have been working together on this college-level geology class that's offered that Chris offers at Hudsonville High School.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: And to be honest, I've heard the story of how Chris created this class probably like 20 times in the last maybe even six months.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so, if we go back further than that, I've heard it many more times.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to hear, I want to hear it from your side of the story.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like 20 years ago, or however many years ago, how did you get hooked up with this idiot Chris Bullheis?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: And and what's it like from your from your view?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Chris was pretty truthful that he called and uh we talked.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the other thing that was good was when I went to Grand Valley and explained what we wanted to do, they said yes, and they they Still say yes.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so they see value in supporting the high school and quality teaching at the high school.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing that it did was it gave us uh a solid foundation that we went back to well, we went to NSF and we said, Can we have money to grow this?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And NSF did supply money.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so the first go-around was essentially for me to travel to other geology departments in the state, uh, sit down with their faculty, show them the exam that the students were taking, and they would look through the exam and say, Yeah, if a student can pass this exam, we'll award credit.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so now we've grown to about 10 colleges and universities in-state, a few out of state, like Arizona State and Montana State award credit.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a good thing.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other was a grant to essentially grow the number of high schools.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: So probably one of the most rewarding things is seeing the collaboration of the high school teachers.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: And there are some really talented teachers across the state of Michigan.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I have kind of a core group that offer this course, and Chris is part of the mentoring and collaboration within that group.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we've grown based on the really good start that Chris provided.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: There are some of the teachers that are sort of fading out as they retire, uh, but we've got some young people that are starting their careers that will start by offering this course.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we can really use it as an avenue to generate interest in earth science.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it's effectively an advanced placement AP geology class for all intents and purposes.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: So from the high school perspective, I mean, I got credit at Hope College, which is kind of right down the road from Huttsville and from Grand Valley State University.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: They gave me, I think it was four credits for you know my grade in that high school class.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: I want to be real clear too that I had absolutely nothing to do with all that Steve talked about.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: All we did was Because we know, we know you had nothing to do with it.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, come on, you don't need to tell us that.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I didn't.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: I had nothing.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: All I did is had like a hey Steve, can we get these kids college credit?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: And Steve just couldn't say no and off he goes.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, how many high schools do you have in this program right now?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, right now we have about 10.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's been about 15, so it waxes and wanes, and 10's a really good stable number.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: For example, last summer I had already planned out a trip across Pennsylvania doing a little John McVeigh geology.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: Jesse will give you a call.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: You can drop down to I-80 and be this.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: I would love, I would absolutely do that.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: But providing those experiences for the high school teachers uh to get them excited again and for them to learn geology in different regions, that's a good basic fundamental thing.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I enjoy learning that geology and we can learn it together and see it together.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, what's the future of this course?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess, you know, why isn't it an AP class?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't we have AP earth science or AP geoscience?
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the the first one's easy.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: The future of the course is I will keep doing it probably another 10 years.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and even when I retire, I I don't mind doing it as long as Grand Valley is still supportive, and I think they would remain so.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that part works pretty well.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: The AP part is different because then you need the college board, and so the college board needs to make money.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to essentially say, I don't know what the cutoff is, but it's probably a hundred thousand or hundreds of thousands of students taking that AP exam, you know, at least every year.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why there's not one.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's not that huge Earth science high school push to have an exam.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: It seems scalable, especially in our in the context of our next gen standards, you know, the geosciences being sort of more emphatic or more uh deep in their standards here.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like it seems scalable, I guess, that this type of thing might be scalable to a to the nation and more broadly than that as well in the future.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: Do you do teachers?
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: It is true, but as Chris mentions, do you have the right teachers to teach it at that level in that room?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: What are you working on now?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Mostly focused on unequal distribution of mineral resources and that next gen standard.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I have an honors student, and she's working on we're working on diamonds, copper, mostly, and she'll present in a month or two.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that works.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then with my integrated science students, pre-service teachers, we're looking at unequal distribution of water in the United States.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're working in two-person groups to essentially describe the variety of aquifers in the United States, how we use or overuse those aquifers, how we protect or contaminate those aquifers.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that's another large group project, kind of like the newspaper thing.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think there'll be a lot of material come out of it that we can readily share with teachers that they need.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you might understand Michigan aquifers, but probably not um basin and range.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: So if we can come up with standardized ways of sharing that, I think teachers across the country would value that.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: So are you developing activities and so on that go along with that?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: That is really, really cool.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that would be their lesson, lesson planning kind of thing.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's great.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's a beautiful beach uh in Iceland that has boulders the size of um a meter in diameter.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: There, it's really unusual.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I was thinking of tsunami wave deposits and what I might find in Hawaii.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of a backburner research.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: So are you saying those boulders in Iceland are tsunami deposits?
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them are, yeah.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: And there are some in like the south flank of Hawaii had an earthquake in 1975 that generated a local tsunami and moved large boulders.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: And those have been investigated, but I can think of a couple of other beaches that might be interesting to look at.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, also in warm, beautiful climates, I'm sure.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, it's the price you pay for being a geologist.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: You get to go to cool places.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: I know what is the best excuse in the world.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: If you were not a geologist, what would you want to do?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: I would still do science.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this sounds weird, but I like viruses.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: I find virology interesting.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, believe it or not, I read a lot about Ebola and public health, those kinds of things.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I might be that kind of uh biologist.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: So volcanoes in Ebola, you're a little bit like disaster-oriented here, maybe.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a theme?
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know what's funny is that I've been reading um a large book about West Africa and disease, but they mention geologists because they talk about the colonial era and they talk about scientists coming in and doing a wide variety of things.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: And they actually mentioned some of the scientists that I know from the volcano observatory.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not uncommon during Rwanda and the crisis there, they were sending in volcanologists to make sure the volcano was not going to be one more factor that people had to deal with.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's crazy.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting, that's yeah, that is.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: That is all right.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: What geological discovery has made the most profound impact on the field of geology?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's tough.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'd go back to that.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a tough one.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's Chris's question.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a tough one.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um boy.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to say mass spectrometers and geologic time scales.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that seems fair.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Mass spectrometers, done.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: We don't need to go any further.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm with you.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: No, I agree completely, Steve.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: The age of the earth, mass spectrometry.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: What has been your best day as a geoscientist?
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: Almost every day.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, things that jumped to mind would be um when we lived in Hawaii, and my wife worked for the Volcano Observatory, she was charged with mapping the flow front of the Pauihoi lava, typically.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember working with her when she was making her map, we would walk out of tropical rainforest on the south flank of Kilauea and in a really narrow transition, go from beautiful green forest to forest burning.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I can remember the smell of the forest burning to walking right up onto the front of the lava flow.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the transition was so narrow in that forest because that forest is adapted to fire and adapted to the lava coming through it.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was just beautiful, and it was smoky and a smell of hollow trees burning.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: The other one was being a park ranger and being surrounded by lava on three sides, actually, lava on two sides, and burning forest fire on the third.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: And people would walk down the road, which was cut off by the lava, and then we had a trail down to the flow front, smoke in the air, embers in the air, lava, and everyone was perfectly safe, but absolutely beautiful experiences for park visitors.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that would be a good thing to do in retirement.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe get back to a national park.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's a really, really good answer.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's a great answer.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's a good answer.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's a good answer.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: I like that.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: Steve, that is a wrap.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: We want to say thank you so much.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this was super interesting.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love your insights on education and you know, experience with exploration geology.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh super interesting conversation.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: Really appreciate it.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think you can edit this down to about seven good minutes.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll just cut Chris out and then you know, we're already down to half an hour.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: So okay, and that's a wrap.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for tuning in to Planet Geo.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: And as always, if you got something out of this podcast, if you like what you hear, we just ask that you share it with somebody.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: And while you're at it, just hit subscribe, give us a review, and share with one of your friends.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening to Planet Geo.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: Stay tuned next week.