Undergraduate Teaching

GLG207 Rockforming Processes.  This course serves as an introduction and foundation to the study of petrology, covering the genesis and description of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks.  The course is evenly weighted between laboratory and lecture material.  The goal of the course, simply stated, is for students to be able, by the end of the course, to examine hand specimens and thin sections of any common terrestrial rock, identify it, and make a statement about how the rock formed.

GLG445 Field School II.  In this course the students spend two weeks in the field in the Benny Greenstone Belt.  The area includes a portion of an Archean volcano-sedimentary greenstone belt and associated plutonic rocks, unconformably overlain by Paleoproterozoic clastic metasediments which themselves have been folded and metamorphosed to the greenschist facies.  The entire area has been strongly affected by faulting related to the formation of the Sudbury Structure, a Proterozoic impact basin that rivals any such structure in the world for its size and quality of exposure.  Students are expected to peform a compilation of previous academic, government, and industry field work in their map areas.  Results of a high-quality airborne electromagnetic and magnetometer survey (VTEM; provided by Noront Resources Ltd and Geotech Ltd) are available covering the mapping area.  A final report is due one week after the field work is complete, comprising the compilation of previous work, interpretation of the geophysics, maps of exploration trenches over a small VMS-type deposit, a 1:5,000 scale map of the field area, and a proposed diamond drill program designed to test the VMS deposit at depth.

MIN400.  This field course is designed for intermediate-level undergraduate students in the Lassonde Mineral Engineering Program.  Students are introduced to the practical aspects of logging exploration drill core both for geology and Rock Quality Data, mapping of exploration trenches in the Sudbury district, and the measurement and interpretation of a geological mapping traverse across a portion of the Benny Greenstone Belt.

Graduate Teaching

GLG2304  Geochemistry.  In this seminar course students are assigned a key paper to read each week.  Aspects of the scientific background are treated in a lecture early in the week , and then at a second meeting the students come prepared to lead a discussion on the assigned paper.  Topics are chosen to reflect the research interests of the students in the class.  Extra credit is given for the presentation of ancillary information (online supplementary data, additional readings on the topic) by students at the seminar meeting.