EARTH SCIENCE ARTICULATION COMMITTEE Annual Meeting
May 8, 2004
Langara College , Vancouver
Attendance and Representation
Jennifer Orum BCCAT
Brett Gilley Douglas
Des Wilson (Liaison admin) Douglas
Heidi McDonald Langara
Mark Smith Langara (chair)
Dileep Athaide Capilano
Jennifer Getsinger Capilano
Ken Klein Cariboo
Dave Waddington Douglas
John Martin Kwantlen
Maggie McColl Malaspina
Gordon Weary Northwestern
John Greenough Okanagan
Lesley Anderton Selkirk
Frank Fowler Selkirk
Robbie Dunlop Simon Fraser
Terry Neufeldt Trinity Western
Kathy Gillis University of Victoria
Gary Clohan (College of the Rockies ) and James Scoates (UBC), were unable to attend but sent written reports.
Tark Hamilton – Camosun, was unable to attend.
1.0 ADDITIONS TO AGENDA
8.0 NEW BUSINESS
b) Qualifications
c) BCCAT updates
d) Geology 12
e) Medical coverage for students on field trips
3.0 MINUTES OF 2003
M/S John Martin/Kathy Gillis
“to approve the minutes of the annual meeting May 5, 2003.”
CARRIED
5.0 CHAIR'S REPORT – Mark Smith
Mark expressed thanks to Brett for his leadership of the Friday Field Trip to the Abbotsford area which was well attended. Mark attended the Chair's meeting at BCIT and talked briefly about it.
6.0 INSTITUTION REPORTS
Langara – Mark Smith
See report circulated
Note GEOG 2290 Advanced Geomorphology
Kwantlen – John Markin
A new hydrology course will start in the fall, with second year transfer to UBC.
Good enrolments in physical and historical geology.
Trinity Western – Terry NeufeldtGEOL 109 Introductory Geology
GEOL 220 Geology of the Pacific N.W.
Also teaching first year physical geography
Growing
Selkirk College – Lesley Anderton
Enrolments were somewhat low but all the courses went well and retention from physical to historical was good.
GEOL 220 Sedimentology & Stratigraphy will not be offered next year.
Lesley is retiring and will be replace by Frank Fowler, who is already involved with hydrology, geology and environmental science at Selkirk.
SFU – Robbie Dunlop
Two new faculty – Carbonate Stratigrapher and a Vulcanologist
New courses:
1. Geohazards: “The Earth in Turmoil” – 1 st year non-lab course
2. Advanced course – Petroleum Geology
Joint field trip with UBC to Scotland – excellent – in two weeks saw all the major sites. SFU used it as a credit course, but UBC didn't. Scotland again in 2006.
Certificate in Forestry Geoscience
Job prospects for students are awesome. Contact Ashton & Berwicki – on the web look for Bushrats
Northwestern (Terrace) – Gordon Weary
Starting to offer hydrology, geomorphology and GIS in second year for Associate of Science. Decided to go this route and not do geology anymore because of difficulties with transfer. Government have announced funding for a mining program at Terrace and this will require geology and so there may be geology next year.
Capilano – Dileep Athaide & Jennifer Getsinger
Discussion ensued on UBC's move to separate lecture (3 credits) and lab (1 credit) as courses. This was felt to be pedagogically unsound. Dileep is teaching EOS 110 at UBC summer school and finding it difficult to teach a mixed class, with some students not taking the lab and others taking it. David Waddington commented that Douglas is now getting 4 credits from UBC for their 3 credit lecture/lab courses. Jennifer Orum, BCCAT said a document covering this will be coming out soon. Universities may look at outcomes rather than credit c.f. “How to Articulate Credit Handbook”.
NOTE: As a follow up to the comment made by David Waddington in the previous paragraph regarding credit transfer from Douglas College to UBC, the following amendment to the 2004 minutes is inserted. According to Mary Lou Bevier t he above is not true. Douglas College students who transfer to UBC will receive 3 credits for a 3 credit 1st year geology course that they took at Douglas College . The course at Douglas is equivalent to EOSC 110, ‘The Solid Earth' at UBC, which is a 3 credit course. By taking Douglas's course that has lectures and a lab, they have also satisfied the equivalent of EOSC 111, The Solid Earth laboratory component, at UBC, but they do NOT receive an extra transfer credit for it. Therefore Douglas College transfer students (and any other transfer student) who take a 3 credit 1st year physical geology class, that has both lecture and lab components will have satisfied the requirements for both EOSC 110 and EOSC 111 at UBC, but will only receive 3 transfer credits.
For Capilano report – J. Getsinger - see report circulated. Basically just Phys./Hist. Geology. Used Moore & Wicander “Changing Earth” for both courses and recommended “Vancouver on the Edge” for the historical and field trips.
New Canadian edition of Plummer, McGeary, Carlson & Eyles “Physical Geology” looks good as does the new edition of Tarbuck & Lutkins “Earth” and Marshak “Earth, Portrait of a Planet”. Should we invite publishers to the articulation meeting? Could probably do this if we had a joint meeting with geography. Concern was expressed re clash of Geography and Geology Articulations this year.
University of Victoria – Kathy Gillis
Growth due to “The Ocean's University” and therefore new faculty – chemical oceanographer, biological oceanographer and a coming chair in physical oceanography;
BC Government Leading Edge Chair – Eco systems & Global Change. Also hired a petrologist and a climate modelling specialist.
Second year requires two calculus courses – students find differential equations tough – hoping to have an earth sciences instructor to teach it and provide more practical applications. Students can go into the second year program with some combination of physical geography, physical geology and historical geology, but cannot get credit for both physical geography and physical geology at the moment. The Articulation Handbook may provide a means of being more flexible in the future. Kathy offered to check into the transfer agreements for first year courses and to e-mail people. Gordon W. suggested college students taking three courses should get credit for all three.
U.Vic. does now give lab. science credit for physical geography courses.
Douglas – Dave Waddington
See report circulated.
Same number of students as last year. Now have four first year courses. Geohazards now has no prerequisite. Course nos. are changing to 4-digit numbers from three. Developed a certificate in geology as a subset in an arts program e.g., librarian with speciality in science. Assoc. Degree in Environmental Science but also a diploma for those without a science background. Working on a field geology course – eight weekends – ½ environmental studies and ½ strictly geology.
Malaspina – Maggie McColl
See report circulated.
Maggie requested that we all submit written reports in future (good idea!). For the first time no long wait lists partly because Malaspina has eliminated the science requirement for an arts degree. Also geology required CHEM 11. Malaspina is also looking at 4 credits with separate lab credit. Exploration companies are looking for students. Students at the colleges tend to take as many courses as they can before moving onto the major universities and therefore can lose as much as six credits if they are taking both geology and geography courses. Earth Science Minor has yet to be funded, but hope it will be by January. Geoscape Nanaimo should be out by fall and will help with the grade 4-7 program. Maggie recommended an exchange for one semester in Arizona !
Cariboo – Ken Klein
Transition to full university status and combination with open university still unfolding and not very clear. Some people from open University will probably fill positions at Cariboo as faculty retire. There is a committee for a new name. Williams Lake will have a new campus as the old one suffered from subsidence. Enrolments are fine, but there has been a bit of a drop off particularly in the wait lists. Ken expressed concern about international students using translator aids and he does not allow the use of aids in his courses.
Okanagan – John Greenough
See report circulated.
Rob Young has joined the faculty.
Two degree programs – Freshwater Science and Earth & Environmental Sciences.
Enrolment is fairly strong with 160 in Physical Geology on all three campuses. Should soon have professional registration – APEG BC .
Lots of money for research in hydrology.
EASC 145 scrapped as it was a non-university credit course for elementary education students. Hope to eventually be able to offer all courses on more of an annual basis. John expressed disappointment with all the cuts to the 4 th edition of Historical Geology by Wicander & Monroe and said he was happy to have college transfer students. John suggested it would be helpful if we e-mailed our course titles, textbooks & enrolments to each other.
College of the Rockies – Gary Clohan & UBC – James Scoates
Written reports were distributed as they were unable to attend.
7.a. JOINT EARTH SCIENCES /GEOGRAPHY TRANSFERABILITY – Robbie Dunlop
This is being discussed at geography articulation too.
Aiming for clear statement of outcomes for physical geology. There is overlap where geomorphology is concerned. Problem with hybrid courses – students losing their transfer credits. Intent is to make transfer easy for the student.
Mark Smith – Maths had to agree on uniform format for 1 st year calculus. Would not agree on all learning outcomes, but found nine core elements that had to be incorporated and each school then had to choose six other elements from a list of 20.
Kathy Gillis – U.Vic. prefers the combined approach as they felt there was redundancy and they feel the combined geography/geology is very effective.
Terry Neufeldt – Feels that content is not that important – what is important is that we teach earth science concepts and that students get credit for the courses they take.
Gordon Weary – Concerned that geology may be shut down and replaced by physical geography if students can only get credit for one of them.
Dileep Athaide – Two concerns:
1) Loss of credits for students
2) Smaller Colleges – administrators may say don't need both physical geography and physical geology. UBC has accommodated transferring students by giving 2 nd year credit for the traditional 1 st year historical geology.
John Greenough – Geology not often taught in high school so that few students know the composition of the earth and therefore it cannot be replaced by physical geography.
Jennifer Orum – If there is a creative way to deal with extra courses and loss of transfer credit perhaps this can be solved. Perhaps this subcommittee can wrap this report up in a way that can support transfer students. Can institutions be flexible about transfer credit?
Mark Smith – would like to see a core group of outcomes for each course. Can we agree to try to form a consensus on learning outcomes.
Terry Neufeldt suggested we should be able to live with the outcomes already listed.
Mark suggested prioritizing them and Terry wondered about allocating percentage of time spent.
Dave and Robbie felt assigning values would be counterproductive and Terry agreed.
Dave suggested that students might expect to lose credits en route.
Maggie feels that we owe it to the students to make courses transferable without a significant loss of transfer credit. Unassigned credit would solve the problem of no credit. Committee felt that courses were significantly different.
Frank expressed concern that students will not go to their local colleges if courses are not deemed transferable.
Mark – We should reword the report to make it clear that students should receive unassigned transfer credit for courses.
Gordon suggested the committee should sit down and work it out with Kathy from UVic.
Kathy – Felt that it should be possible to get direct credit for two courses and the exam and to could get unassigned credit for students taking both geology and geography courses. Kathy suggested that it would be difficult to do this at the UVic level, but suggested going to the articulation body and she is willing to do this.
Jennifer Getsinger – Also have to make sure APEG BC is taken into account, but it is not too worried about 1 st year courses.
Maggie McColl – Suggested that we look again at p. 7 and see if we have consensus on the recommendations.
MOTION
M/S Terry Neufeldt/John Greenough
“to accept the report as circulated.”
CARRIED (One opposed)
Could the subcommittee meet with the universities to resolve the recommendations. UBC is not here and we need to know what happened with geography articulation. People can still e-mail suggestions to Robbie.
7.b. OUC - UBC MERGER – John Greenough
1. Institution will be broken into two parts. University and College. Kathleen Jagger (College) should be invited to next year's meeting as she could be teaching EESc 111 and 121 in the new “ Okanagan College ” if she decides to stay in Penticton .
2. Grad studies will commence in the fall of 2005 and Earth and Environmental Sciences is well positioned.
3. At the moment there is some confusion as the merger will not be fully in place for another year.
8. NEW BUSINESS
a) Future Meeting – date to be decided (check Geography Articulation, GAC/MAC and Field schools). To be held at Selkirk – hosted by Frank Fowler and Lesley Anderton.
b) Qualifications for teaching 1 st year Earth Science.
Lesley stated that Colleges usually require a master's degree in an appropriate discipline and universities accept first and second year transfer courses providing they are taught by people with an appropriate background and adequate knowledge of the course material. Kathy Gillis concurred. John Greenough was concerned that a biologist was hired to teach first year earth sciences at OUC and was inappropriately qualified.
c) BCCAT Update – Jennifer Orum
1) BCCAT taken over Opening Doors B.C. where students can find out about 1500 post-secondary programs in B.C.
2) Historically done more on transfer but new admissions committee will be looking at admissions.
3) Looking at quality assurance, particularly in relation to private institutions. Accept both private and out of province providing.
1. Degree Quality Assessment Board
2. Minister given consent.
3. Approval for transfer only for those programs given consent.
Then will be looking at diploma level.
4) Looking at Newsletter on website, Special Report on Articulation, new version of Articulation Committee Handbook.
New publication coming on “How to Articulate” also see “Transfer Tips” for students – updated on web. Not longer print full transfer guide - course to course is on the web.
5) Current Project – Course Outline Template – nearing completion.
d) GEOL 12 – Terry Neufeldt
Geology 12 and all other Grade 12 exams will continue to exist, but there will be an increase in multiple choice questions. Geol 12 provincial exam will however be optional next year. (This is at least better than killing the course. On average 1800 students have written the exam each year for the last 5 years.)
e) MEDICAL COVERAGE FOR STUDENTS ON FIELD TRIPS – John Martin will send an e-mail on this.
Thanks were expressed to:
a) Mark for hosting the meeting with short notice when Selkirk had to back out.
b) Brett for the excellent field trip with good plant fossils and brickyard tour.
c) Robbie and her committee for their hard work on the Joint Geography / Geology Transfer Project.
04 09 21 / LA/lk/pw