Tentative Lecture Syllabus:
Professor Vince Cronin's Section of
Geology 1405 The Dynamic Earth

Professor Cronin reserves the right to revise this syllabus as necessary throughout the semester. Notice of revision will generally be given during one or more lecture meetings, or via email broadcast to registered students in the course. This syllabus is not a contract.

You will be required to read and sign an Acknowledgment Document and submit it to Dr. Cronin. Among other things, this document indicates your understanding that MasteringGeology and the laboratory are both required parts of this course, and that there are no makeups for work with missed deadlines or missed labs.

The lecture section of this course meets MWF from 9:05 until 9:55 AM in Baylor Science Building (BSB) room E125.
Lab/Office: BSB E441 . . . . . Telephone: (254) 710-2174
Office hours: MWF from 10:00-11:00 AM, or by appointment
email: Vince_Cronin@baylor.edu

All email communication to Professor Cronin concerning this course must originate from your Baylor email account.

Purpose of this course: This course is an attempt to explore and summarize the best scientific understanding of Earth's ~4.6 billion year age, evolution, composition, and major dynamic systems, as that understanding exists in the geoscience community based on published peer-reviewed scientific literature. We want you to become literate with respect to the Earth sciences (http://www.earthscienceliteracy.org).

You need to commit to doing good work and learning the course material. Your goal should be mastery of the material that you are asked to learn in this course. This will take 1-2 hours of work for every 1 hour of scheduled lecture. In particular, you will need to study material from the textbook or lab book prior to attending the class/lab in which that material is discussed. If you are not willing to devote that amount of time to this course, you will not learn the material and, hence, there is little point in your taking this course.

This section of The Dynamic Earth involves the use of online resources managed by Pearson Higher Education, the publisher of our course textbook. An e-text version of the following textbook should be included with your MasteringGeology account, if you acquired it through the Baylor Bookstore:

12th edition of Tarbuck, Lutgens & Tasa, 2017, Earth -- An introduction to Physical Geology: Pearson, ISBN-10: 0-134-07425-4, ISBN-13: 978-0-134-07425-2, 788 p.

You need not purchase a paper copy of the textbook if you have access to the e-text. You will need to have access to some form of the textbook, however.

MasteringGeology Is A Required Part Of This Course

A number of online exercises (homework, study modules, quizzes) are scheduled for you to complete in MasteringGeology accessed through the Canvas learning management system (LMS). All of them are graded in some way, and all have some sort of due date that is posted on the calendar you can access via MasteringGeology. Except for valid University excuses with written documentation (e.g., illness, bereavement, athletic, performance), there will be no re-setting of the online assignment deadlines to accommodate people who missed them this semester. If you miss the due date, you will not be able to make-up the exercises for credit.

To register for MasteringGeology, read and follow the directions provided on the PDF document http://croninprojects.org/Vince/Course/PhysGeol/Register-4-MasteringGeology-instructions.pdf

Help for students to register with MasteringGeology through the Canvas LMS at Baylor can also be found at http://help.pearsoncmg.com/mylabmastering/canvas/student/en/index.html

To get to the Canvas LMS, start at the Baylor homepage
http://www.baylor.edu/, select the STUDENTS link on the left of the screen, choose Online Tools on the left side of the subsequent screen, and then choose Canvas. This will link you to a login page for Canvas. After logging in with your Baylor ID and password, choose the correct course section: 201930GEO 1405 01 - The Dynamic Earth

To get to Mastering Geology after you have logged in to Canvas, select the Geo 1405 course you are enrolled in, then select MyLab and Mastering along the left column. This should connect you to MasteringGeology at Pearson.

Approximate Class Schedule

In addition to the university holidays this semester (Labor Day Sept 2, Fall Break Oct 25, Thanksgiving Nov 27-29), Dr. Cronin will be out-of-town thr following times

• September 23-25 for the GSA Annual Meeting in Phoenix
• October 7-11 for the SAGE-GAGE Workshop in Portland
• October 22-24 for the IRIS-EPOSC meeting in Austin
• December 8-13 for the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco

Click on the topics in the table below to access additional useful information.

About Quizzes

The first quiz on August 30 is for demonstration purposes only. It will not count toward your grade.
All other quizzes are scheduled to occur at the beginning of class on the class day following the end of a given topic. Except for valid University excuses with written documentation (e.g., illness, bereavement, athletic, performance), there will be no make-up or re-take quizzes this semester. All make-up quizzes will be administered within one week (or within 3 class meetings) of the original quiz unless other arrangements are made with Dr. Cronin within 3 days of the original exam. No quizzes will be administered early.

Material on lecture quizzes will be drawn from material covered in class and in the assigned textbook chapter. Students are responsible for having read all of the assigned chapters in the lecture and lab books. You should assume that every exam is cumulative in nature, so anything from earlier in the course might be part of a subsequent quiz.

Pyramid Quizzes

We will have four pyramid (or 2-stage) quizzes during the semester, each of which will involve material from the three previous topics. Each of these will take an entire class period.

A pyramid (or 2-stage) quiz involve students answering some exam questions independently and turning their answers in before answering either the same questions, new questions, or both in cooperative groups (https://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/earlycareer2011/cooperative_exams.html). As implemented in our course, the individual quiz will determine 75% of the total quiz grade, and the cooperative quiz will determine the rest.

Final Exam Schedule For This Course

The final exam for this course is Tuesday, December 17, from 9-11 AM in the same classroom where the lecture is held.

Quizzes and exams for this course will not be administered through OALA. Separate accommodations will be made available to students who require additional time, etc.

About Accessing Your Grades

Grades for in-class exams and in-class activities for this course are mainly accessed online via Canvas. Lab grades are handled by graduate teaching assistants.

About Lab

• The Laboratory Is A Required Part Of This Course. Labs begin the week of August 28, and take place on the fourth floor of the Baylor Science Building, room E-406.
• Dr. Cronin is in charge of the content of the laboratory sections in this course. Please tell him if you are having content- or TA-related problems. If you have other problems related to the labs, contact Sharon Browning (Sharon_Browning@baylor.edu).
• There is a separate syllabus for the lab part of this course, which is available via http://croninprojects.org/Vince/PhysGeoLab/index.htm. The laboratory syllabus is an extension of this course syllabus. Failure in the lab part of this course results in failure in the entire course.
• Your attendance at each lab session is mandatory, and there are no make-up labs. Students who miss more than 25% of the scheduled lab meetings will receive a grade of "F" for the entire course.
• All labs are two hours long, so do not plan anything until after the lab is scheduled to be over.
• No completed lab activities will be accepted that are not submitted on the relevant pages torn from the lab book. No photocopied activity sheets will be accepted. Ergo, the lab book is absolutely required.
• A pre-lab series of questions might be asked, based on material published in the introductory text (i.e., the text between the beginning of the chapter and the first of the activity sheets).
• A post-lab series of questions will be asked to determine what was learned during lab.
• Additional information about the lab will be posted via http://CroninProjects.org/Vince/PhysGeoLab/

Approximate Lab Schedule

* These items are in addition to your lab book, a pencil, a ruler with a metric scale (cm, mm), and an inexpensive scientific calculator (e.g., Texas Instruments TI-30Xa Scientific Calculator, or Casio FX-260SOLAR11 Scientific Calculator — both available at big-box stores for ~$10 or less) or a sufficiently charged smartphone with a calculator app.

** A drafting compass is a device for drawing circles. There will be a few in the lab if you don't have one.

Other Important Information

• Your attendance at every lecture session is expected. By college policy, you must attend at least 75% of the lecture meetings and 75% of the lab meetings in this class. In order to be considered "present" for purposes of this rule, you must be present for the entire lecture or lab session. Students who do not attend at least 75% of the lectures and 75% of the lab meetings will receive a grade of "F" for the course.
• Cell phones, pagers, audio/video recorders, text-messaging devices, audio players (e.g., iPods...), cameras, laptop computers, tablet computers and other recording, communication or keyboarding devices must be turned off and put away during all exams. Their use at other times might be allowed, at the discretion of Dr. Cronin. Courtesy and common sense dictate that they should not be used if they are a distraction to any other member of the class. So that there is no misunderstanding, Facebook and Twitter and other social media apps/sites are preemptively defined as a distraction during class.
  Professor Cronin does not give permission for any audio or video recording of his classroom communications.
• No food or beverage is permitted in the lecture classroom or in the laboratory.
• Disruptive behavior, as judged by Dr. Cronin or the lab teacher, will not be tolerated in the lecture or the lab sessions. Dr. Cronin and the laboratory teachers reserve the right to require any student to leave the lecture room or laboratory because of disruptive behavior.
• You should bring a basic scientific calculator to every lecture and lab session. Adequate scientific calculators that can perform arithmetic and trigonometric (e.g., sin, cos, tan) calculations and basic statistics of one variable (mean, standard deviation) cost as little as $10 to $15, and need not have any graphing or programming capabilities. You are assumed to meet the national mathematics standards that have been established for graduating high-school students (e.g., http://www.nctm.org/standards).
• You must bring something to write on (a notebook and some 3x5 cards) and something to write with (pen, pencil) to class each day. The notebook paper or 3x5 cards might be used for submitting in-class responses.
• Homework handed-in late and missed in-class assignments will result in a grade of 0% for that assignment. No make-up opportunities will be offered for missed in-class assignments or assignments (i.e., pre-lecture quizzes, post-lecture quizzes, homework, other assignments) offered through the online MasteringGeology resource.
• All lecture exams and quizzes are closed-book, closed-notes exercises unless otherwise indicated. Use of cell phones, personal digital assistants, or other resources that can facilitate cheating is not permitted during exams. People who are suspected of cheating during the lecture or lab exams will be subject to University disciplinary proceedings.
• Correct use of standard English is a valid grading criterion throughout the lecture and laboratory sections of this course.

Credit Distribution for Grading

Tentatively, the grading in the lecture section of this course will be related to preparation (prior reading of text, online assignments or homework, pre-lecture quizzes), participation (attending lectures prepared to participate and ask/answer questions), chapter/unit assessment (assigned homework and end-of-chapter quizzes), and the final exam, with the following approximate weighting:

The weightings presented above might change before the end of the semester. Remember, this syllabus is not a contract.

Final Course Grade

For students who have attended at least 75% of the lecture meeetings and at least 75% of the lab meetings, the final course percentage grade will be determined using an equation like the following:
Final course percentage grade = {(A x 0.75) + (B x 0.25) + C + (D x [1.0 - {(A x 0.75) + (B x 0.25) + C}])}, where

• A is the total percentage grade that you earned from the lecture section,
  
• B is the percentage grade from the lab section (supplied by the laboratory instructor),
  
• C is an optional translation factor (a positive number or zero) chosen by Professor Cronin, and
  
• D is an optional compression factor (a positive number or zero) chosen by Professor Cronin.
  

Professor Cronin determines the values of the translation and compression factors, and the same factors are used for all students in the course. Standard rounding procedures used throughout science will be employed in the conversion of decimal percentages to integer percentages. Based on the final course percentage grade, letter grades are assigned as follows:

Academic Success

I have high academic expectations for you in my course.
If you find yourself struggling academically, you should consider seeking assistance through the Paul L. Foster Success Center in Sid Richardson (www.baylor.edu/successcenter/).
While I am here to facilitate your learning, responsibility for your learning is yours alone. You will need to commit yourself to taking the time necessary to study and to take care of your mental and physical health by getting enough sleep, exercise, and good food every day. There are many distractions at a university, but it is your responsibility to fulfill your most important responsibility — to learn.

Academic Integrity

Academic integrity refers to the "integral" quality of the search for knowledge that a student undertakes. The work a student produces, therefore, ought to be wholly his or hers; it should result completely from the student's own efforts. A student will be guilty of violating academic integrity if he/she...
(a) knowingly represents work of others as his/her own,
(b) uses or obtains unauthorized assistance in the execution of any academic work, including possessing or using a stolen copy of one of Professor Cronin's exams, or
(c) gives fraudulent assistance to another student.
After McGlynn, A.P., 2001

Plagiarism or any form of cheating involves a breach of student-teacher trust. This means that any work submitted under your name is expected to be your own, neither composed by anyone else as a whole or in part, nor handed over to another person for complete or partial revision. Be sure to document all ideas that are not your own. Instances of plagiarism or any other act of academic dishonesty will be reported to the Honor Council and may result in failure of the course. Not understanding plagiarism is not an excuse. As a Baylor student, I expect you to be intimately familiar with the Honor Code — www.baylor.edu/honorcode/

In the spirit of being a good steward of university resources, you must be careful not to abuse samples, maps, models, reserve materials, or other resources provided for your use in this course.

Students agree that by taking this course, all required papers, exams, class projects or other assignments submitted for credit may be submitted to turnitin.com or similar third parties to review and evaluate for originality and intellectual integrity. A description of the services, terms and conditions of use and privacy policy of turnitin.com is available on its web site: http://www.turnitin.com. Students understand all work submitted to turnitin.com will be added to its database of papers. Students further understand that if the results of such a review support an allegation of academic dishonesty, the course work in question as well as any supporting materials may be submitted to the Honor Council for investigation and further action.

Military Student Advisory

Veterans and active duty military personnel are welcomed and encouraged to communicate, in advance if possible, any special circumstances that might impact their participation in this course, such as an upcoming deployment, drill requirements, or disability accommodations. Contact the VETS Program Office with any questions at (254) 710-7264.

Students Needing Academic Accommodations

Any student needing academic accommodations as documented through the Office of Access and Learning Accommodation (OALA) should inform me immediately at the beginning of the semester. Required documentation and information regarding accommodations is available at the Paul L. Foster Success Center, 1st floor on the East Wing of Sid Richardson, (254) 710-3605. Accommodations available in this course are not unlimited, and do not include taking quizzes or exams at an OALA-administered site outside of the Geosciences Department.

Issues Related to Title IX

Baylor University asserts that it does not discriminate on the basis of sex or gender in any of its education or employment programs and activities, and it does not tolerate discrimination or harassment on the basis of sex or gender. If you or someone you know would like help related to an experience involving sexual or gender-based harassment, sexual assault, sexual exploitation, stalking, intimate partner violence, or retaliation for reporting one of these type of prohibited conduct, please contact the Title IX Office at (254) 710-8454 or report online at www.baylor.edu/titleix.

The interim Title IX Coordinator for Baylor University is Maureen Holland. The Title IX office understands the sensitive nature of these situations and can provide information about available on- and off-campus resources, such as counseling and psychological services, medical treatment, academic support, university housing, and other forms of assistance that may be available. Staff members at the office can also explain your rights and procedural options if you contact the Title IX Office. You will not be required to share your experience.

If you or someone you know feels unsafe or may be in imminent danger, please call the Baylor Police Department (254-710-2222) or Waco Police Department (9-1-1) immediately. For more information on the Title IX Office, the Sexual and Gender-Based Harassment and Interpersonal Violence policy, reporting, and resources available, please visit www.baylor.edu/titleix.

For an overview of Title IX, read the description available from Wikipedia.org at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX

Assault

If you or someone you know becomes the victim of a rape or other serious assault that might have left physical evidence, go (or encourage the other to go) to a hospital emergency room where the evidence can be collected/documented by a trained professional who can establish a legally proper chain of custody for the evidence. Go as soon after the assault has occurred as possible, and do not change clothes or wash any part of your body until after the evidence is collected. It is my understanding that this confidential process does not commit anyone to reporting or filing charges in the incident, but it does preserve the evidence and hence preserves your/their ability to pursue legal courses of action in the future. If the evidence is not collected, the possibility that the assailant will be brought to justice is greatly reduced if not completely eliminated.

Assault victims should seek the assistance of a professional counselor who has been trained to help assault victims, and who is sufficiently credentialed so that a victim/client's communication with them is legally recognized as confidential. This professional service must be rendered by a trained and credentialed professional, and is not a service that your friends, family, pastor, minister, lawyer, academic advisor, department head, favorite teacher, dorm RA, or other informal (untrained, uncredentialed) counselors are able to provide. Professional counseling will be necessary to begin the psychological healing process.

Baylor University has reportedly asserted its belief through papers filed with the court that "Universities do not owe a legal duty to protect students from harm from fellow students" (Waco Tribune-Herald, 8 January 2017, "BU moves to dismiss 4th Title IX suit" by Phillip Ericksen).

To develop your background knowledge of the issue of sexual violence on college campuses, I recommend that you begin by reading Jon Krakauer's 2015 book Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town (Doubleday, 384 pp., ISBN 0385538731)

For answers to frequently asked questions about geology and science, go to http://www.baylor.edu/Geology/index.php?id=26719

If you have any questions or comments about this site or its contents, drop an email to the humble webmaster.
All of the original content of this website is © 2018 by Vincent S. Cronin