Frank taps CAREER award to create ‘History on the Rocks’

For the second summer in a row, Tracy Frank has served up “History on the Rocks.”

Funded by a CAREER Grant from the National Science Foundation, “History on the Rocks” is a summer program that introduces concepts of climate change through sedimentary rock formations.

“Climate change has become a very emotional and politically-charged issue with people,” said Frank, a professor of geosciences. “The idea of ‘History on the Rocks’ is to help people understand how geoscientists reconstruct how climate has changed using data in the geologic record. That way, they can see that climate change has happened in the past and realize that it is an issue that has risen from scientific observations, not because of politics.

“We want participants in History on the Rocks to walk away with the realization that the earth is a dynamic place, that it is constantly changing.”

Frank

Last summer, Frank held a multi-day workshop with teachers, traveling across Nebraska to different exposed outcrops, showcasing the fossil record and how Nebraska has evolved in climate and environment. This summer, Frank took a different angle and held a two-day workshop (July 8-9) for a group of 10 Omaha high schoolers from Girls, Inc.

“We targeted grades nine to 12 because research has shown this is an age where girls in particular decide to turn away or embrace science,” said Frank. “Along with talking about climate change, we also discussed careers for women in geosciences.”

To introduce the teens to the vastness of the geologic record, Frank turned to the football field in Cook Pavilion. On one end was the formation of the Earth, the other the current day.

“We divided 4.5 billion years by 100 yards,” said Frank. “We placed flags representing different events in Earth’s history, like when the first life appeared. What really stood out to them were those last 10 inches of the football field – the part where everything has happened.”

On the second day, the girls were taken to a rocky outcrop in southeastern Nebraska.

“They were picking marine fossils out of rocks in a Nebraska field,” said Frank. “That’s the point when something twigged in them. Their brains realized that Nebraska was actually once covered by a shallow sea.”

Along with the camp, Frank is using the $583,000 NSF CAREER Award to research climate transitions in the Earth’s past. She is focused on the late Paleozoic era (roughly 250 to 300 million years ago) at sites in Australia and the United States.

Students who took part in the “History on the Rocks” camp examine strata on a Nebraska outcrop.

To supplement the summer program, a Web site featuring related lesson plans for teachers. In the final two years of the four-year award, Frank said she will continue to direct the “History on the Rocks” program toward teens.

Frank has been assisted by three graduate students on the CAREER project, Jessica Pritchard, Zi Gui and Jesse Koch.

For more information, go to http://go.unl.edu/wre.

– By Troy Fedderson, University Communications