Category: Departmental News

When she discovered the summer job choices in her hometown of Eugene, Ore., didn’t fit her interests of environmental advocacy, community building, and education, Ani Kameenui sacrificed fast cash for a worthier cause. Together with a high school friend, the Carleton College junior founded, organized and now oversees Whole Earth Kids (WEK), a grassroots, non-profit organization that runs free summer camps about environmental issues for children primarily from low-income families.

Shelby Boardman, Charles L. Denison Professor of Geology, discusses the philosophy and approach of the Carleton College geology department. He focuses on the importance of establishing a collaborative culture in which students are directly involved in their own education and where students do open-ended investigative work. He also dicusses the importance and role of Comps and of alumni majors, and how Carleton’s approach has affected the outcomes of its graduates.

Mary Savina wrote this article as a letter to Patricia Martin, Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations, as background to a grant proposal.  However, we think that it gives interesting insights into the Geology Department Curriculum, so we republish it here.

The Carleton Network For Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Geology and Natural History Alums was six years old and had 29 members in 1996 when this article appeared in the Carleton Geology Newsletter. But in 1990 when the network was organized we viewed it as a good idea but something of an experiment. Whereas the Geology Department and the college had extended significant support resources to students who were members of racial and ethnic minorities, we were not reaching out nearly as much to assist the significant but invisible minority of our students who are LGBT. It turns out we have and always have had LGBT students, but for many years we did not realize it.

Julianne M. Williams ’94:

The Carleton Geology Department has a reputation as being one of the best geology programs in the country. The department prides itself on the high number of women geologists it produces. Is this perceived success real, and if so, what are the reasons for this success?

This paper explores some of the reasons why the Carleton geology department continues to graduate a high percentage of female majors. I interviewed ten women geology majors in their junior and senior years with a list of questions about the factors that influenced their decisions in becoming geology majors. The women were selected unscientifically from those whom I found frequently in the geology labs in Mudd Hall. The information presented here is a combination of my own personal observations, the results of research into existing literature, and the interviews.