Students working together on a lab activity.

Tentative Lab Syllabus: Geology 1405 The Dynamic Earth

We reserve the right to revise this syllabus as necessary throughout the semester. Notice of revision will generally be given via email broadcast to registered students in the course.
Revised 29 August 2015

Important note: This syllabus is not a contract.

The laboratory teachers for this course are:

• Kathy Breen (Kathy_Breen@baylor.edu), Mondays at 2:30 and 4:40 PM
• Lance Auguste (Lance_Auguste@baylor.edu), Monday 12:20 PM, Tuesday 12:30 PM and Wednesday 2:30 PM
• Matthew Strasser (Matthew_Strasser@baylor.edu), Wednesday 12:20 PM

All email communication to your teachers concerning this course should originate from your Baylor email account.

Purpose Of This Lab

The laboratory portion of this course provides us with an opportunity to engage in active learning, and to get a close-up look at minerals, rocks, fossils, maps, and other materials that are important to the study of physical geology. This course overall 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).
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. 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. You need to commit to doing good work and learning the course material.

Required Book

Lab-section text: Geo 1405, The Dynamic Earth, custom for Baylor University: Pearson Custom Library, ISBN 1269814214, 285 p. The custom text is based on the 10th edition of Busch, 2014, AGI/NAGT Laboratory Manual in Physical Geology: Pearson, ISBN-10: 0321944518, ISBN-13: 9780321944511, 404 p.

About Lab

• The Laboratory Is A Required Part Of This Course. By college policy, you must attend no less than 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 lab session until dismissed by the lab teacher. Students who do not attend at least 75% of the labs will receive a grade of "F" for the course.
• Labs begin the week of August 31, 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 (Vince_Cronin@baylor.edu). If you have other problems related to the labs, contact Sharon Browning (Sharon_Browning@baylor.edu).
• 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 will be asked, for which no preparation is necessary.
• 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

Other Important Information

• 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 quizzes. Their use at other times might be allowed, at the discretion of the lab teacher. 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 laboratory room.
• Disruptive behavior, as judged by lab teacher, will not be tolerated in the lecture or the lab sessions. The laboratory teachers reserve the right to require any student to leave the laboratory room because of disruptive behavior.
• You should bring a basic scientific calculator to every 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 lab each day. The notebook paper or 3x5 cards might be used for submitting in-class responses.
• Homework handed-in late and missed in-lab 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-lab quizzes, post-lab quizzes, homework, other assignments).
• All lab quizzes are closed-book, closed-notes exercises. 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 lab quizzes 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.

Grading

The lab grade is reported to the faculty member who teaches your lecture section as a percentage score out of a possible 100% perfect score. That comprises 25% of the total course grade, and the lecture part of the course supplies the remaining 75% of the grade.

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

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.

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 © 2015 by Vincent S. Cronin