Curriculum
From your very first course in Geology you will begin to exploit our greatest asset - our location. You will get out into the field at least 10 times during your first year of studies in Geology at Juniata. And that pattern continues, with field experience holding a key place in most of our more advanced offerings. It is this field work, combined with laboratory studies, that will give you the observational and analytical skills needed to tackle serious issues like environmental site assessment, environmental remediation, natural hazards mitigation, minerals and fuels resource exploration, and tangle with basic research questions, like the origins and evolution of life, the origins of the continents and oceans, the nature of earthquakes, or even the origins of planets.
Add to that some serious coaching in presentation quality writing and oral delivery, and you've got a combination that prepares you well for either the workaday world or further research.
In all of your coursework you will not only gain essential skills, you will also gain an appreciation for the human component in interactions with the physical environment.
Your First Year
- Introduction Environmental Science and Studies
- Introduction to Physical Geology and its associated Intro Physical Geology Lab
Typical Second Year
- Historical Geology and Historical Geology Lab
- Mineralogy
- Water Resources I (surface water hydrology)
Third year and Beyond (more advanced electives)
- Paleobiology and Paleoecology of Invertebrates
- Petrography
- Structural Geology
- Sedimentology
- Petrology of Igneous and Metamorphic Rocks (a capstone course)
- Stratigraphy (a capstone course)
Applied Geology (and related) Electives
- Water Resources II (groundwater hydrogeology)
- Geophysics
- Geographic Information Systems
Additional departmental offerings
- Oceanography
- Death and Destruction by Nature
- Climate: Past and Present
- Energy, Minerals, and Society
Collateral Science Essential to Geologists
- Chemistry (Physical Inorganic Chemistry I and II)
- Calculus
