New Undergraduate Curriculum

Oct 7, 2016

The department has recently submitted its new curriculum to the University for approval and will be in effect starting this upcoming fall 2017.

Starting during the summer of 2014, the Department began running curriculum study groups where current and former students, industry employers, and graduate programs indicated areas where our degrees needed to be modified or enhanced. Following the suggestions made by this group, rubrics were created to define the learnings to produce the ideal TAMU G&G graduate. Discipline-specific groups met to review and revise the rubrics, to decide what learning outcomes needed to be met and how they would be met in the classroom setting.  There are various advantages of the new curriculum, which will standardize courses between professors.

The new curriculum, will maintain the broad foundation in traditional disciplines, such as rigorous math and science courses.

With the new curriculum, students will spend time in the field earlier in their degree, and will get more experience with writing, speaking, and research. In the geology degree, new courses will be implemented and new aspects of courses will go into effect—for example geologic field methods will now include a GIS short course upon returning from the field. The geophysics degree is implementing various new courses, such as a Geophysical signal processing course and geophysical field methods course. The goals of the changes in the geophysics degree are to Strengthen and broaden students’ hands-on experience with modern geophysical data collection and manipulation. The department is excited about the new changes occurring to the undergraduate curriculum, and hope future graduates will be excellent candidates for graduate school and careers.

Special thanks to Dr. David Sparks, Dr. Julie Newman, Suzanne Rosser, Cristina Figueroa, the Center for Teaching Excellence staff, the College of Geosciences, and the Department of Geology & Geophysics for their efforts in the new Geology and Geophysics Undergraduate curriculum.