Giving Tuesday - 1 Dec. 2020 - Supporting Student Field Camp Scholarships

Giving Tuesday, a global day of giving following Black Friday and Cyber Monday, kicks off our year-end campaign to support field camp scholarships for the next field season. Many GSA student members have benefited from this support over the years, and you, our members, understand the need for, and value of, these scholarships. From now until 31 December, we aim to raise funds to help at least 20 students to attend field camp—whether in person, or virtual—next summer.

For a discussion on traditional camps, as well as new virtual models hurried into place with the year’s pandemic, please join us on 1 December at 12:00 p.m. MDT for a Virtual Chat Honoring J. David Lowell: Field Camp in Changing Landscapes. Jeff Oslund, GSAF Board of Trustees Co-Chair, will lead a conversation with GSA Past President George Davis on GSA’s commitment to supporting field work. Dr. Miriam Barquero Molinai, Director of University of Missouri’s Geology Field Program, will talk about the importance of in-person field work, historically and into the post-pandemic world ahead. We will also hear first-hand experience from a fully virtual Indiana University field camp attendee, Michael Hanna-Wilson.

One week later, at 12:00 p.m. MDT on 8 December, Jeff will lead a second virtual conversation about changes and challenges with in-person and virtual field camps in a quickly shifting environment.

Both sessions will offer you the chance to ask questions and be part of the conversation about field camps.

Several recipients of the 2020 J. David Lowell Field Camp Scholarships shared with us the challenges and rewards of attending virtual field camps and how receiving the scholarship helped them navigate those challenges. Selena Kimball considers the University of South Florida’s virtual field camp to be the capstone of her geology degree and she now feels prepared to continue her academic and professional career. Maria Solis discovered the interesting and diverse geology in her home state of Texas when her field camp decided to stay local instead of going to Montana. Natalea Cohen’s virtual field camp through Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, challenged her to apply all of the geologic knowledge she’s learned in the last three years as she and her classmates remotely mapped the nearby geologic features. You can read the full stories from all three of these students right now on the Foundation blog (https://gsa-foundation.org/news-events/) with more to come over the month of December.

Click the DONATE button at the top right and make a gift to our Field Camp Opportunities Fund. You will be helping more students experience field camp as they prepare for the next step in their geoscience careers.  

Captions (left to right): Selena Kimball, Fall 2019, at Little Glass Mountain, California; Maria Solis mapping an outcrop in Uvalde County, Texas, in July 2020; Natalea Cohen, Molas Pass, Colorado, holding a map of the area, summer 2020.