This story appeared in the Fall 2020 Letters & Science magazine.
It’s not at all unusual for Stephen R. Meyers to teach his Geoscience 100 course — a class that routinely attracts several hundred students — while standing on a chair. Or a desk. Or, during remote learning forced by COVID-19, on the roof of his house using a drone. This spring, Geoscience 100 went viral on Twitter, thanks to an exchange with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson — a great example of how Meyers is always finding new ways to make learning about rocks a lot more fun.
Front and center in my mind is the opportunity I have to cultivate scientifically empowered individuals who base their decision-making on sound science, logic and empathy for one another. Climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and especially the recent protests and Black Lives Matter movement make this more relevant than ever before.
I feel a professional, societal and personal responsibility to put creative energy into developing better approaches to communicate and teach science.
It is wonderful to see the students realize that this is not going to be the usual experience in a large lecture hall. Some of the more creative things we do, like lecturing from a roof or playing a drum kit on frozen Lake Mendota to demonstrate seismic waves, are meant to be playful and joyful, because that’s how I experience science. The same energy, enthusiasm and playfulness that we, as scientists, put into our research is the approach I have chosen to also put into my teaching. More generally, all of this helps emphasize the emotion of science: the wonderment, the joy of discovery, the profoundness of the deep geologic history and connections that we all share, revealed through a shared past.
At the core of tadada Scientific Lab (an ongoing project cofounded with photojournalist Gigi Cohen), is collaboration and embracing possibilities. When I asked the students (at the beginning of the pandemic) to dream big about possibilities for how we could make the course meaningful even though we wouldn’t be together in the classroom due to COVID-19, they responded with fantastic ideas, and reaching out to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on Twitter was one of them. We felt grateful that he responded with a personal story about his connection to geology.
My hope is to reach each student and to facilitate a journey of scientific wonderment and discovery that will inform their lives. I also want to equip them with tools that will help them thrive in college and beyond, whatever path they may take.
The title of the last lecture I give in Geoscience 100 is “Living in an Uncertain World.” It became even more pertinent this year. It’s about how science can empower us and allow us to see opportunity and possibilities immersed in uncertainty.