Bill Braddock Geology in the Field Endowment

This endowment is named for Professor Emeritus William A. Braddock, who passed away in January, 2003. It recognizes the lasting value of Bill’s contributions in field geology. Bill was a consummate field geologist and mentor of an entire generation of CU geology students in field and structural geology. To many of us, Bill epitomized the art and science of field geology in its most intense sense. He spent most of his career working in the northern Front Range of Colorado and adjacent Wyoming, seeking to unravel Proterozoic to Laramide events right in Boulder’s backyard. Bill’s enthusiasm and his caring and objective style played an influential role in the lives and careers of >70 students on whose M.S. and Ph.D. theses committees he directed or sat, and in the careers of hundreds of geology majors who took his undergraduate field and structure courses.     Field geology remains an essential element of our educational program. The faculty organize numerous field trips in order to teach students geology in the field and not just in the classroom. These trips range from short, 3 hour excursions around the Boulder area for both majors and non-majors in our introductory geology courses, to one day and weekend trips in the Colorado Rocky Mountain region for our undergraduate majors and graduate students, as well as special week to ten day trips to areas of unique geologic interest and importance on the west coast, in Mexico, the Basin and Range, Yellowstone Park, and on occasion Hawaii. Many of the field trips are directly associated with the field courses for our majors. Students pay a course "fee" to cover the transportation costs associated with these field courses. However, the money generated by this course fee covers only part of our actual yearly field trip transportation budget. Also, many of the field trips the department runs are not associated directly with field courses. For instance, the major courses such as mineralogy, petrology, structure, hydrogeology, stratigraphy, geophysics, paleontology, and petroleum geology are basically lecture and laboratory courses, not field courses, and therefore do not generate money from course fees for transportation. However, these courses will typically involve one or two day or weekend field trips that are essential for demonstrating the material of the course in the field. Also many graduate courses, described as either lecture or laboratory courses or seminars, involve field trips, although students in these courses do not pay transportation fees. If you remember field geology as one of the more motivational and effective aspects of your educational experience as a geology student, and would like to support this opportunity for current and future students, please consider making a gift to the Bill Braddock Geology in the Field endowment. This endowed account will remain available to the department in perpetuity, and we will only spend the interest generated by the account each year.

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