This course is designed to provide water utility personnel, engineers, hydrogeologists, regulatory officials, and other interested persons an understanding about the sand and gravel and bedrock aquifers in New England, how and why well performance declines over time, and information about available options for rehabilitating these wells.

This course is designed to help faculty and non-academic professionals host career discussions with students. The course provides learners with specific career-related content, materials, and well-tested tools that will help in facilitating geoscience career discussions and presentations. The course will cover three main sections:

Geoscience research is at the forefront of characterizing the earthquake risks associated with the Cascadia subduction zone in the Pacific Northwest. This course covers the science and its implications for policy decisions and resiliency efforts.

Communicating results of geoscience investigations to a diverse set of audiences will grow in importance in our 21st century world.

Fresh water is an increasingly scarce resource in an increasingly populous and water-intensive world. Maintaining an adequate supply of fresh water both nationally and globally will be one of the largest challenges of the 21st century. Desalination of salty water, from both the ocean and the ground, represents a huge potential source of fresh water.

This course provides an overview of earthquake risk in the U.S. and explores the importance of coordinated post-earthquake response and the effectiveness of post-earthquake technical clearinghouses in improving earthquake resiliency.

Coastal hazards are a widespread challenge that cost millions (and sometimes billions) of dollars in the U.S. every year due to property loss and spending on mitigation measures. Based on the most recent U.S. Census, over 39% of the U.S. population lives in areas that may undergo significant coastal flooding during a 100-year flood event.

This course is intended as a basic review of seismic prospecting methods for locating and extracting oil and gas global resources. It begins with a review of world hydrocarbon reserves, production and consumption, as well as overall goals and methods which apply to petroleum exploratory efforts.

This course covers what it takes to succeed while working for yourself. Topics include why consultants get hired, the pros and cons of consulting, and whether or not you might be a good fit.

As the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased over recent history, so has the acidity of oceans worldwide. The changing acidity of the ocean has many ecological and economic impacts, one of the most serious being its effects on marine life and fisheries.

We will go on a tour of some selected outcrops of the Cretaceous System of central Texas. This general area constitutes one of the best exposures of Cretaceous strata anywhere around the globe. In the course, we will emphasize various aspects of the development, stratigraphy, sedimentology, structure, and paleontology of these Cretaceous units.

This course focuses on the qualification requirements to get a Professional Geologist (PG) license in California and upcoming changes that applicants should understand. It will also provide an overview of the California laws and regulations that govern the practice of geology.

This course is designed to be an introduction to the subject of landslides or mass wasting. Landslides or mass wasting occur in both solid bedrock and in poorly-consolidated sediments. Concerning the latter, loose sands, clays and soft shales can prove to be quite problematic. These type of strata are highlighted in our discussions.

Geoscience is essential to our understanding and management of produced water, an inevitable byproduct of oil and gas development. This course provides a scientific and regulatory background of produced water, how it is commonly disposed, what opportunities exist for the re-use of produced water, and what the environmental and regulatory challenges for re-using produced waters are.

This course provides insight into the professional and technical writing skills that are needed by geoscience students pursuing careers in state government agencies.

The purpose of professional licensing is to ensure a minimum level of competency for practitioners in a given field in order to protect the public. Having a license to practice geology is a requirement in the majority of United States, Canada and several other countries. In contrast to other professions, a disconnect has developed between applied geologists and academia.