The 21st Century has brought a profusion of online databases for structural geologists, stratigraphers, and field geologists in general. Increasingly, our students are confronted with this flood of numbers and it is incumbent upon us to teach them the quantitative skills they will need in order to take advantage of this digital bounty. The National Science Foundation (Tectonics program) has graciously agreed to support a summer school to take place over the next two summers with the purpose of training instructors of structural geology in quantitative methods.

Year 1: 26 July - 2 August 2024

Teaching structure lab using basic vector operations and linear algebra. For background, nothing more than a year of college math is assumed. All computation can be done in spreadsheets unless the attendee is more comfortable with a more advanced language. Attendees must bring their own laptops and a phone or tablet with which to collect field data. Lectures and exercises will be interspersed with field excursions where attendees can collect and upload their data to the StraboSpot database to be used later in class exercises. Instructors: Rick Allmendinger, Cornell University, and Basil Tikoff, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The Locale: Crooked Creek Research Station, White Mountains, eastern California

This beautiful field facility provides easy access to the spectacular geology of the White Mountains. The facility provides all the rustic amenities normally associated with a field station. Notes on logistics: 1) The field station is located above 10,000 ft (3,000 m). Please ensure that you have no medical conditions that would impair your functioning at these elevations! 2) There is good internet coverage. 3) It is approximately one hour and 6,000 vertical feet to the nearest town.

How to apply & Financial Support

Please send a brief (250 words or less) statement of interest as well as a two-page NSF style vita to Basil Tikoff (and cc Kyrsten Johnston: basil@geology.wisc.edu & kljohnston@wisc.edu) no later than April 1, 2023. After that time, if the course is unfilled, we will go to rolling admissions. Thanks to NSF we have some support for travel and all of the fees at the field station for US-based attendees. Please include in your statement your interest in receiving support and whether your attendance is contingent on partial or complete support. We welcome applications from other countries as well but cannot provide any support. Attendance is limited to ~20 participants.

Who should apply?

Preference will be given to structural geology professors in the first half of their career as well as post-docs and senior grad students who are committed to an academic career. It is expected that attendees will make a good faith effort to apply what they learn in the summer school in their teaching of structural geology classes.

Online resources

It is our intention to put many of the resources used for this short course online, so that the materials and instructional videos are available to those unable to attend. If there is demand and sufficient funds, we will consider running this course again in 2025.

Year 2: Dates TBD, but generally late July/early August 2025

Year 2 will focus on statistics in structural geology and related disciplines, taught by Josh Davis and Sarah Titus of Carleton College. Year 1 is not required for Year 2 and there will be a separate application process for year 2. The math used in year 1 will definitely be helpful in year 2, however!