A journey to explore the geosciences. Climb mountains, cross glaciers and enter the eye of a hurricane. Find evidence of ancient life, minerals from deep within the Earth and "rivers" of underground water. Enter the quest to discover the beauty and wonder found on Earth.

"Earth Science" or "Geoscience" seeks to understand the Earth and other planets. Various specialties focus on air, earth, and water. Independent systems, atmosphere, geosphere and hydrosphere, are completely dependent on each other, all uniting to create our planet Earth.

"You see the earth as a bright blue and white Christmas ornament in the black sky. It's so small and so fragile - you realize that on that small spot is everything that means anything to you, all history and art and death and birth and love"

The UTC Geology program supports students by offering hands-on experiences with a wide variety of equipment including: X-ray Diffractometer, Hach Spectrophotometer, transmitted and reflected light petrographic microscopes and thin section and polished section equipment. In addition, undergraduate students can participate in a 10-day field trip to examine the geology of either the Southwestern United States or Costa Rica.

Call (423) 425-4404
Visit the Geology program web site at:
http://www.utc.edu/Academic/Geology

The National Science Foundation is a federal agency tasked with keeping the United States at the leading edge of discovery in a wide range of areas from astronomy to geology to zoology. In addition to funding research in the traditional academic areas, the agency also supports "high-risk, high pay-off" ideas, novel collaborations and numerous projects that may seem like science fiction today, but which we'll take for granted tomorrow. In every case, research is fully integrated with education so that today's revolutionary work will also be training tomorrow's top scientists and engineers.

Many of the discoveries and technological advances have been truly revolutionary. In the past few decades, NSF-funded researchers have won more than 160 Nobel Prizes as well as other honors too numerous to list. These pioneers have included the scientists or teams discovering many of the fundamental particles of matter, analyzed the cosmic microwaves left over from the earliest epoch of the universe, developed carbon-14 dating of ancient artifacts and decoded the genetics of viruses.

Another essential element in NSF's mission is support for science and engineering education, from pre-K through graduate school and beyond. The research NSF funds is thoroughly integrated with education to help ensure that there will always be plenty of skilled people available to work in new and emerging scientific, engineering and technological fields, and plenty of capable teachers to educate the next generation. For more information, go to the NSF website: http://www.nsf.gov/about/glance.jsp

Funding for this project was provided by the National Science Foundation award GEO-0503539. For more information on the National Science Foundation please visit their website at: www.nsf.gov.

Welcome to Earth Explorations! I am Dr. Habte Giorgis Churnet, the Head of the Physics, Geology & Astronomy Department at UTC.

Explore the following pages to discover different aspects of the geosciences. The UTC Geology program is dedicated to excellence in undergraduate education in the areas of classical and environmental geology.