FEATURE
College of Science
By Cassie Myers
Stories that highlight experiential learning
Scientists are explorers and adventurers. The College of Science prepares students for teaching, research or technical careers in biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, geology, mathematics, meteorology and climate science, science education, physics and astronomy and marine sciences. See how College of Science students experience hands-on learning: exploring active tectonics on field trips, excavating fossils, using state-of-the-art machines for 3D printing projects and much, much more.
It’s Everyone’s Fault
Students in Kim Blisniuk’s active tectonics class venture into the field to learn how to identify faults in the landscape and discover more about earthquake history and safety.
Many of us lose the joy of field trips roughly around the age of 15 or 16, when adults stop dragging us to dairy farms or tech museums or historical monuments. But it’s precisely this, a trip to the field, that fuels so many crucial curiosities and discoveries, particularly in geology. And this can only be achieved by stretching legs, piling into cars and stepping out to walk the earth and learn the things that can be read in its surfaces and depths.
Photo by Cassie Myers.
AI illustration generated by Adrianna Rodriguez, ’24 Graphic Design.
Math With a Side of Industry
San José State students in the CAMCOS program get a taste of the working world as they use their math and computer science skills to help industry partners tackle big projects.
As anyone at a university knows, you can’t swing a stick without hitting an acronym. In this case, CAMCOS (the Center for Applied Mathematics, Computation and Statistics) is the acronym in question, a long-running San José State University program that pairs math majors (and majors in related fields) with industry to help them solve various problems.
Digging Deep
Students in Carlie Pietsch’s paleontology class excavate and research their own fossil samples as part of a hands-on lab course that teaches them about the day in and day out of the field.
When you enter Carlie Pietsch’s lab, you step into a new world. You’ll spot students huddled over microscopes or gathered at a table, hunched over a chunk of rock with intense concentration. You’ll see a student standing partially obscured by a fume hood, gluing parts of a fossil together, or others with their noses practically pressed to a piece of stone, examining the fragile traces of a burrow dug millions of years ago by a tiny, prehistoric creature. You may even pass a student hard at work with an anvil and a hammer, breaking rock into smaller, more excavatable pieces.
Photo by Jim Gensheimer.
Top photo: Jim Gensheimer.
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