Matthew VanBrocklin
Hello and welcome to St. Lawrence University geology. It has been my privilege to work as the geology technician for 20 plus years now, helping faculty and students in their work in geology. My routine varies from day to day and season to season, depending on the needs of the geology department. Being a natural science, many of our geology labs are spent in the field during the fair weather of the fall semester. Field trips are where geology students are introduced first hand to the local geology of the North Country and the regional geology of the Northeast. This is nitty gritty hands on learning at its best as the North Country has many rock types close by to include sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rocks and many of the minerals associated with these rocks can be found and identified. Our faculty also provide opportunities for our students to attend professional conferences and field trips to other states and even other nations. It’s probably safe to say that field trips are a favorite learning opportunity for most of our students.
For a small department, we have a decent selection of geology tools and equipment for students to use in their geology pursuits. We have some fine modern equipment such as a table top X-Ray Diffractometer and a table top X-Ray Fluorescence unit here in Brown Hall. Next door in the Johnson Hall of Science there is an Electron Microscope that can be made available to faculty and students to use. And we have some pretty cool much older equipment also. We have two large slab saws and a smaller cut off saw used for cutting rocks, flow meters and water depth tools used in hydrology work and other equipment, all kept in good working order for our students and faculty to use. You can usually find me in the background performing maintenance on equipment, addressing vehicle and travel issues, and ensuring tools and supplies are ready and available for the numerous lab activities and field trips.