2007 North Central Section Meeting

University of Montana-Western's Birch Creek Center

Please come to Montana this summer and share the beauty and geology of the Pioneer Mountains!

Where: near Dillon, Montana at UM Western's Birch Creek Center
When: July 31-August 2, 2007

About the meeting and NAGT

The National Association of Geoscience Teachers "works to raise the quality of and emphasis on teaching the geosciences." NAGT is the only organization dedicated to teaching geosciences at all academic levels. If you are not a member, check out the organization. This meeting will be the first for the North Central Section in a long time. It will be a combination meeting, including teaching materials and methods exchanges, professional talks, a field trip, social time, and an organizational/business meeting. Please consider contributing a talk or poster session.

The deadline for registration and contributing has been extended to July 20, 2007.

The setting and logistics

Birch Creek Center is a lovely small branch campus of the University of Montana Western, located in the Eastern Pioneer Mountains (see location map). Our meeting will be held in the Bender Center, which has meeting rooms, dining facilities, and bathrooms (with showers) upstairs and shared sleeping rooms downstairs. There are limited rooms for two people, so if you want one of those, please reserve early.

If you plan to fly, Butte, Montana is the closest airport (about 1 hr drive). Bozeman, MT and Idaho Falls, ID are both about 2 hrs drive from Dillon. We will create a list of people and their arrival times if there is interest in sharing a rental car from an airport. Also, if there are enough people arriving at the same airport near the same time, there could be a van to pick you all up.

Schedule

July 31 - Please plan to arrive at Birch Creek Center in the afternoon.

1:00—5:00 PM: Registration & arrival activities
5:30 PM: Dinner and introductions
7:00 - 9:00 PM: Poster/Exchange Session - Geoscience teaching materials and methods
9:30 PM: Campfire with dessert, homemade music, and conversation

August 1

7:00 AM: Breakfast
8:30 - 11:30 AM: Speaker Session - Challenges and Successes in Geoscience Teaching or Assessment
12:00 PM: Buffet lunch
1:30 - 5:00 PM: Field Trip, Geologic field trip in the Birch Creek area, eastern Pioneer Mountains: An example of the photo-journal assignment in action
6:30 PM: Dinner
7:30 PM: Speaker, Thomas G. Satterly, Montana Council for the Humanities
"Workers of the World Who Came to Butte" (early 20th C copper-mining boom town)

August 2

7:30-10:00 AM: Breakfast and business meeting