2024 Courses

Geoscience Courses at the IU Judson Mead Geologic Field Station

We have been teaching geoscience field courses at the IUGFS since 1949.  During that 70+ year history, more than 7,000 students from over 300 universities have taken our courses. 

Alumni routinely credit IUGFS as a key educational experience for their career success.  The top IUGFS experiences cited for career success are:

  1. Developing critical thinking skills to evaluate multiple working hypotheses and make independent decisions based on the available data;
  2. Integrating different aspects of the geosciences to solve complex problems;
  3. Thinking in 3- and 4-dimensions;
  4. Developing time management and project management skills;
  5. Applying the scientific method;
  6. Learning and/or refining geoscience skills.

2024 Course descriptions

Why choose Indiana University’s EAS X429?

  1. The opportunity to study 3.8 Ga of North American geologic history
  2. For its outstanding 3-dimensional geologic exposures
  3. This is a 6-week, 6-credit course focuses on integrating a variety of geoscience observations and subdiscipline skills to solve complex 4-dimensional geoscience problems
  4. There is a 1:7 or better instructor to student ratio with faculty experienced in most geoscience subdisciplines
  1. The Judson Mead Field Station environment allows students to focus on learning, not course logistics
  2. You have a choice of a subdiscipline concentration in Environmental geology, Geomorphology, Igneous systems, Sedimentology/Stratigraphy, or Structural geology during week six
  3. It's excellent preparation for graduate school or a job
  4. You need a 6-credit field course to graduate
  5. You want to use financial aid from your home university to attend a capstone geoscience field course

X429/498 Subdiscipline concentration courses

Basic admission criteria for EAS X429

  • Completion of at least the following courses before June 2024 (four courses, one from each group):
  1. One introductory course for geoscience majors (Physical Geology, Engineering Geology, Historical Geology, Environmental Geology, etc.)
  2. Mineralogy, Petrology, or Earth Materials
  3. Sedimentology, Stratigraphy, or Earth Processes
  4. Structural Geology and/or Tectonics
  •  Overall and Geoscience GPAs > 2.9 (on an A = 4.0 scale)
  • A letter of recommendation from a geoscience faculty member at your home university.

Upon preliminary acceptance, we will schedule a 20-minute Zoom session for you to meet one of the X429 faculty. This meeting is for you to ask questions and to make sure you understand what the course and living at the Judson Mead Geologic Field Station will be like. This meeting is primarily so we can provide information to help you decide if an IUGFS course is the right fit for what you want to achieve and the experience you are looking for.

 The enrollment for X429 will be capped at 60 in 2024.

Working conditions in the field