Cam Davidson, Associate Professor of Geology, has been awarded one of eight undergraduate research program grants for the summer of 2009 from the Keck Geology Consortium for his proposal, “Exhumation of the Coast Mountains Batholith during the Greenhouse to Icehouse Transition in Southeast Alaska: A Multidisciplinary Study of the Paleogene Kootznahoo Formation.”
Cam will lead a party of nine students mapping an area of southeast Alaska during June and July, 2009.
The study will use a multi-disciplinary approach to unravel the depositional history of the Kootznahoo Formation in Southeast Alaska with a specific focus on the exhumation history of the Coast Mountains batholith (CMB), and how high latitudes (~57°N) recorded overall global cooling from the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) through the Eocene-Oligocene transition to the present icehouse state.
Later in the summer, Cam is directing the Carleton Summer Science Institute, a three-week program for high school juniors and seniors eager to try out the world of college-level science.
The students will spend their mornings attending week-long courses in scientific disciplines including animal behavior, geology and biology. Afternoons will be devoted to research projects in which each participant will self-select into a research group of 10 to 12 students. Together with their research group, the students will take three courses by the end of the program, and will have the opportunity to participate in forums and informal discussions about emerging questions in science, ethics, public policy, science writing, and other topics of interest.