Geoscience Courses at Penn State Delaware County
Integrating public scholarship into general education courses
Public scholarship is an integral part of introductory-level geoscience courses at the Delaware County campus. The nonscience majors enrolled in these general education courses are taking their science knowledge and making a difference by writing letters about endangered and extinct species to kids in inner-city schools for Camp Fire USA's Absolutely Incredible Kid Day! Another course has students created dinosaur-themed education kits for kids at the Ronald McDonald House. For the past four years, students have hosted science badge days for the Girl Scouts on campus. The students have also joined forces with the campus THON group and did a fundraiser called "Change Thru Geologic Time," where the geoscience students taught the campus and outside community about the 4.6 billion years of Earth's geologic and fossil history, while collecting change to donate to THON. These activities and the resulting student impact have been published in peer-reviewed journals, such as the Journal of Geoscience Education, the Journal of Science Education and Technology, and the Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Education.
