Beyond the Classroom

Honors Program 

The honors program is open to seniors with at least a 3.0 GPA over-all. Candidates for departmental honors in the geological sciences shall fulfill the all college honors requirements as well as departmental requirements and specifications.  

Geological Sciences Alumni 

Each year we graduate many excellent students who either entered directly into the work force or continued on to graduate school.  

Earth Science Association 

The Earth Science Association is a student organization open to any Salem State student interested in the earth sciences. Throughout the year the association sponsors field trips, trips to local and national professional conferences, lectures, and social events in cooperation with the geological sciences department. Fossil and mineral collecting trips, hikes in the White Mountains, local geology field trips, and excursions to museums are common weekend activities. Trips to such places and the Basin and Range, Hawaii, Iceland, the Grand Canyon and Florida are periodically planned for spring break. 

Student Research 

With up to 75 majors, the geological sciences department is devoted to undergraduate teaching. All students complete a senior research project as part of their curriculum requirements and present their results at professional meetings. Research projects range from involvement in faculty research, course related research (coastal geology beach studies), or independent geologic projects of local interest. Topics of study include delineating colonial settlements through geophysical investigations, identifying arsenic contamination, analyzing Holocene climatic fluctuations in lake cores, mapping local bedrock fractures, and studying local coastal and estuarine processes.

North Shore Chapter of Sigma Xi

Salem State University, Endicott College and Gordon College have recently installed the North Shore chapter of the prestigious Sigma Xi honor society. The North Shore chapter joins a list of Northeast chapters that includes those at Harvard, Yale, MIT, Dartmouth, Tufts, Norteastern University, Boston University, Smith College and Williams College.  The chapter will sponsor a bi-annual lecture series, a joint scientific conference in February, and an annual induction ceremony for outstanding seniors and graduate students. Students in the geological sciences will be among those presenting at the February conference, and those who demonstrate exceptional academic achievement and a capacity to develop their own research will be inducted as associate members in the spring.