Geology 110: Natural Disasters

Professor Dan Karner

Monday, May 23, 2 p.m. I have been informed that we can use Ives 119 at 4:30 today for a review session for the class prior to the final. I will be there at 4:30. - Dan

Sunday, May 15. Lecture notes, slides, and final review sheet are now posted. I will add the materials for the final lecture after I complete that lecture.

Tuesday, April 26. Lecture notes and PowerPoint slide sets are now up to date through April 25th lecture.

Monday, April 18. We re behind by one lecture, and voted in class today to postpone the third midterm until May 2. I will administer the test during the first hour of that day, and then we will have 2 hours of lecture during the latter part of the class.

Tuesday, March 22: Students- click here to see the score distribution for the first midterm. As we take additional midterms, I will append the charts here as well.

Lecture topics, notes and slides

Midterm 1 Review Sheet (posted Thursday, March 3)

Midterm 2 Review Sheet (posted Monday, April 4, 12:19 a.m.)

Midterm 3 Review Sheet (posted Tuesday, April 26))

Midterm 4 (Final) Review Sheet (posted Sunday, May 15))

Spring 2005 Syllabus and all sorts of other good stuff

Lecture: Monday 4-6:40 p.m. (yikes!)
Location: 119 Ives Hall

My Office: 2019 Schultz
My Phone 664-2854
My e-mail karner@sonoma.edu
My Office Hours: M, T, Th 2-3 p.m.

I strongly encourage you to interact with me by e-mail or by phone. Our offices are not confidential spaces anymore (I share mine with 5 other professors), and so if you want to maintain confidence during your interaction with me, we can do that by e-mail, phone, or by specially arranged time in a conference room. If these office hours don't suit your schedule, please contact me and we'll arrange an appointment.

You will have hard time finding my office at first.  It is in the library, where the kid's reading room and books used to be located (no jokes please). Actually, my office cubicle is farthest from the entrance...I am not sure what that says about me. You are required to check in with an administrative coordinator once you enter the land of faculty cubicles.

Course description. This is my third time teaching this course, and I am still finding my way to a zone of comfort with it. I don't love the text, and I don't love the content that I have prepared yet. Added to this is that we have one long class a week, which means that we meet only 14 times. That's going to be rough on all of us!

Let me explain what I want to do.I have divided the course content into four sections: Ancient disasters that formed our world, and which occur so infrequently that we don't have direct observations of them, modern disasters caused by Earth's internal processes that do occur frequently enough to be part of our lives, modern disasters caused by Earth's enternal processes (the Sun and people) and finally, a special section dealing with weather-related phenomena and natural resources. I hope to show you how our world was built, and then show you how and why
these disasters occur. We'll have tests on each of these sections separately, but there will be a little overlap, since we are trying to get a picture of how the world works, and so some of these sections are interrelated.

Clearly it has been an unbelieveable couple of months for Natural Disasters. We have had the most deadly natural disaster in recent history with the Indian Ocean tsunami. Closer to home we've had earthquakes, mudslides, rockfalls, floods, and even a minor volcanic eruption from Mt. St. Helens (okay, this last one is not a natural disaster by any stretch of the imagination, but it's still cool!). I will try to update you in class about these particular events, so that you are current with the world around you. Additionally, I hope that you will educate me about these events too, as you will probably come across news stories and articles that I haven't seen. If you do, I would love to hear about them!

Grades:
4 midterms = 100% of grade. I could make all these of equal weight, but what would be the fun in that? I don't want you to think that bombing one test will ruin your grade. Rather, if that were to happen, I would want you to keep on working to improve your grade. How can I encourage this? By weighting your top test score heavier, and your lowest one lighter. So here it is:

Top midterm score = 35% of your final grade

Two middle midterm scores = 50% of your final grade

Lowest midterm score = 15% of your final grade

Final letter grade based on the percentage of your overall score for the class, compared with scores of your peers.

I do not give letter grades for each exam, since it is only the final grade that you get in this class that counts. I will calculate your final score for the class from the percentages mentioned above, and then I will compare how well you did overall relative to your peers. It tends to work out that students' final scores cluster in such a way that it is straightforward to identify the As, Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs. This eliminates personal biases from working their way into the grading system- I don't even look at names when I calculate your final grade.

Note that if you are part of an outstanding class, then I will give a large number of As and Bs in that class. I do not have a pre-set number of each grade to hand out. Note that I will not hesitate to assign the dreaded "F" grade to students who earn them. How do you earn an "F"? Don't come to class. Miss exams without an excuse (see grading policy below). So far, the only people who have flunked my class have missed a major exam, and done very poorly on another one.

Policy regarding missed exams

It's tough being a student, and it's also tough being a professor. None of us likes to give students bad grades, and none of us wants you to do poorly in the class. Nonetheless, some of you will earn a bad grade. I try to be as fair as I possibly can to students in my class. I do so by setting up rigid standards regarding how your grades are determined. If you all take the exam at the same time and under the same conditions, then I can be confident that your individual performances can be compared accurately to those of your peers. If you try to take it at some later time, then you've changed the arrangement, and you could quite possibly be putting your peers at a disadvantage, unless I gave them all equal opportunity to do the same. To cut to the chase, I won't do that.

There are four exams. If you miss an exam, then you will be allowed to make it up IF you have satisfied one of the following conditions:

1) you have cleared the absence with me beforehand (and note that I will only accept a reasonable explanation- personal choices (e.g. vacations, visiting family) are not a reasonable excuse to miss class. If you are unsure whether you might be making a personal choice that I won't agree with, then check with me first to make sure that we are on the same page about this).

or

2) you provide me with a doctor's note that states that you were unable to attend class (note that I will expect you to contact me anyway if you are going to miss class with a medical excuse).

If you do not provide me wth unequivocal proof to back up your excuse, then I will not excuse you, and your score will be a 0 for that exam. IF you end up with a 0 for your lowest score, but do well on the other midterms, you can still get a reasonably good grade in the class.

Here are some excuses that have been used in the past, and for which I will not make an accommodation:

I slept through class by accident (don't even try it this semester; we meet from 4-6:40 p.m.!); I had to move, help a friend, work, go on vacation, leave town early for a holiday because my plane ticket couldn't be refunded; I could not get back to town because of some travel difficulty; I felt ill and didn't feel up to coming to class; I had some unavoidable circumstance that caused me to miss class (the car breaking down one has been used to death. If this happens to you, then I will ask you to provide me with a AAA receipt, or a dated repair bill, that proves that your car broke down).

Summary: I expect you to respect your education. While the university is in session, I will expect this to be your highest priority.

Extra Credit

I do not give extra credit assignments. I teach three courses per semester, and two of those have over 100 students enrolled.Trying to provide students with additional opportunities to improve grades is simply unmanageable. Sorry.