Sixteen middle, high school and community college teachers from across the country visited College Station, TX, to take part in the annual School of Rock workshop at the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program's (IODP) Gulf Coast Repository.

Coming from as far away as Alaska and Maine, these teachers spent eight days learning how cores of rock and sediments from the floor of the world's oceans can shed light on climate change cycles of the past.

The Gulf Coast Repository is home to nearly 66 miles of rock cores from the Pacific and Southern Oceans, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. It provides scientists and technicians with some of the most advanced scientific tools in the world to facilitate research.

This year's workshop focused on past climate change, gave teachers daily opportunities to conduct hands-on laboratory activities and analyses of sediment and hard-rock cores and take part in creating new classroom activities based on the scientific discoveries they explored during the workshop. They were mentored and taught by scientists actively engaged in IODP research.

Leading the workshop were staff from the Consortium for Ocean Leadership and scientists from James Madison University in Virginia, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and Texas A&M University. College of Geosciences' Assistant Professor of Oceanography Debbie Thomas and IODP scientists and staff members John Firth, Jörg Geldmacher, Jay Miller, Katerina Petronotis, and Scott Slough participated.

This was the second year that IODP hosted the School of Rock at its Gulf Coast Repository. The inaugural School of Rock in 2005 took place on the JOIDES Resolution, IODP's scientific research drilling vessel which is currently being refitted in Singapore.

School of Rock 2008 is sponsored by IODP and Deep Earth Academy, an education outreach component of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, a Washington D.C. based nonprofit organization that works to advance research, education, and sound ocean policy.

Related Posts:

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• 17 teachers Explore Ocean Floor Core Samples at the Gulf Coast Repository
• Teachers from Around the World Take Part in Hands-On School of Rock 2009 Workshop
• Clement Appointed Director of Integrated Ocean Drilling Program
• Ocean Drilling: How the Past Can Provide Clues to our Planet’s Future Climate