Why Give to Geology?

The College of William & Mary has one of the best undergraduate geology programs in the country, and we want to make it even better! We remain committed to excellent undergraduate education and research and our efforts are recognized by others both on campus and nationally. Sadly, though, our ability to sustain this level of excellence becomes more difficult with each passing year as costs escalate and limit our ability to expand our efforts to get students into the field and keep our computational and laboratory facilities up to date.

As part of the effort to keep the department strong, our first goal is to raise critical support for field programs. Field work remains an important part of geology, and is often where concepts click for geology majors. Given this, we want William & Mary students to be proficient and confident in the field. We currently offer field trips in most courses, regular departmental field trips, and a field methods course, and field work continues to be an important part of senior research. The annual multi-week Regional Field Geology course (GEO 310) that has introduced students to the geologic delights of the Colorado Plateau, Big Bend, and, most recently, Hawaii, was a life-changing experience for many of you. All of this field work is expensive in terms of faculty time as well as money. We are willing to provide the time, but we need help with the money. We currently subsidize most of the field trips so that we can offer these opportunities to students with no or minimal cost and would like to continue that practice. We also want to be able to provide small grants for students doing research. Our second goal is to raise funds to improve our computing laboratory and add GIS capabilities. Training in computational methods is a central part of our curriculum, and occurs both in numerous courses as well as in undergraduate research. This important training is costly given the need to maintain an up-to-date computer lab, which involves regular purchases of industry-standard software and replacement of aging computers. We receive little funding for this effort from the College.

We have ambitious goals that, with your help, we feel we can meet. To start, we would like to build our Founders Fund Endowment so that it would generate an additional $17,000-$20,000 each year (which translates to an increase in the Endowment of ~$400,000). Those additional funds would enable us to:

• Keep the student costs of the Regional Field Geology course reasonable while continuing to offer the course each year = $2,000-4,000 per year depending on location of trip

• Subsidize two departmental field trips each year and offset the rising costs of field trips in courses each year = $2,000 per year
• Add a fund for grants to undergraduate majors for field and lab expenses associated with undergraduate research (@$400 per year for 20 students a year) = $8,000 per year
• Improve our computer facilities and maintain it with current software and regularly-updated computers= $5,000-$6,000 per year

I ask you to consider making a contribution to the department to enable us to continue offering an excellent field and computational education to all geology students. Any contributions toward our goal would be welcomed. However, we hope you might consider making a three-year commitment, in any amount, to help us build the Founders Fund Endowment. We’ve included a pledge form at the end of the newsletter. To make a contribution to the Founders Fund, please write a check to “The College of William & Mary Foundation” with Allocation 1870/Geology in the memo line of the check and send it to The College of William & Mary P.O. Box 1693, Williamsburg, VA 23187-9915.

Your contribution will help our faculty members provide the best undergraduate geology education possible and will make a difference in the education of tomorrow's geologists, earth-science teachers, leaders, and citizens. I thank you for your support.

Sincerely,
Brent Owens