Molly Partridge
Earth Science Teaching Major
Graduating in Fall of 2010
Research started in January of 2009 and I am planning on finishing by December 2009
My research project is Invertebrate Fossil Curation and my research advisor is Dr. Beatty. I will be organizing the WSU Geoscience Department’s invertebrate fossil collection and creating an electronic catalogue to keep track of the fossils we have and make them easier to locate when students and faculty would like to use them. While organizing the fossils, I will be separating them into different catalogues such as a stratigraphic catalogue, which separates fossils by what level they’re found in, or a teaching catalogue, which has good samples to be used in classrooms. The teaching catalogue will be used in WSU classes such as Earth and Life Through Time or loaned out to other schools so more students can benefit from our fossil collection. It is important to have different catalogues so different samples can be used to emphasize different characteristics and similarities among fossils. The conclusion of my project will be to create lesson plans that utilize the teaching collection. At the end of this semester I will be presenting a poster at the Winona State Staff and Student Research Celebration with several other geology majors presenting their own posters to demonstrate how the fossils will be used in future classes.
When I graduate from WSU I would like to teach either junior high or high school earth science somewhere in Minnesota.