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Hamilton College is one of four institutions that will receive money from a $4.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation.  The grant will fund a five-year project, titled "On the Cutting Edge," which is designed to improve the quality of undergraduate geoscience education.   Hamilton has been awarded more than $70,000 from the grant for 2002, and will receive additional funding each year for the next five years.  

Barbara J. Tewksbury, the Stephen Harper Kirner Professor of Geology at Hamilton College, and her colleagues at Carleton College, College of William and Mary, and Montana State University hope to change the landscape in geoscience education.  Tewksbury says, "This ambitious project will create a unique set of professional development opportunities for college and university geoscience faculty members."  

Tewksbury explains that the project has "the dual aims of changing how faculty members teach and enhancing what they teach."  Through a series of real and virtual workshops, the project will improve college and university faculty knowledge on cutting edge topics in the geosciences, and enable faculty members to incorporate those advances into the courses they teach.  The project will also develop on-line resources on these topics for geoscience faculty and promote community engagement and discussion.  

"Geoscience education is in the midst of rapid change," says Tewksbury.  "Research on learning provides new guidance for how faculty teach, the revolution in understanding the Earth system changes what faculty teach, and information technology provides unprecedented support for development of learning resources." 

A member of the Hamilton College faculty since 1978, Tewksbury earned her Ph.D. in geology from the University of Colorado.  Specializing in structural and planetary geology and plate tectonics, Tewksbury has published papers in journals including the Journal of Structural Geology, Geological Society of America Bulletin, and Journal of Geoscience Education. She was awarded the New York State Professor of the Year Award by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.  Tewksbury's current research involves the investigation of deformation in Proterozoic metamorphic rocks of the Grenville Province in northern New York State.

Tewksbury's co-principal investigators are Cathryn Manduca, Carleton College, Heather Macdonald,  the College of William and Mary, and David Mogk, Montana State University. Macdonald and Tewksbury have nearly a decade of experience creating national workshops on teaching and learning. Manduca and Mogk have extensive workshop experience and bring expertise in community-building and development of digital resources for learning as a result of their involvement with the Digital Library for Earth Systems Education. All four are leaders in national geoscience societies including the American Geological Institute, the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America and the National Association of Geoscience Teachers.

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