The family of J. Doug Yule has established the Doug Yule Memorial Field Camp Endowment within the Department of Geological Sciences at California State University Northridge. The goal of this endowment is to offset costs for the summer field geology course, a four-week, intensive, capstone course for all Geology BS majors that takes place typically in the Owens Valley in southern California and other places of geological interest. This course requires that students leave their families, jobs, and homes for four weeks, in addition to summer tuition costs. This fund aims to offset these costs so that students do not incur a financial hardship, thereby making our major more equitable to all of our students.
Doug was passionate about the field geology curriculum in our department. He taught the Summer Field Geology course (GEOL 430 a/b) for more than 15 years, in addition to the introductory field course (GEOL 313). The Summer Field Geology course provides not only the opportunity for students to apply their skills in real-world geologic situations, but also provides a unique pedagogy wherein students are focused on one topic (applied geology field-methods) for four weeks without the distractions of living and working at home. In our ever-changing, online-centric world, this style of teaching is unusual but allows students to learn things at a much deeper level than in a classroom or online setting. He was committed to maintaining the field curriculum for our students, and was always looking for ways to modify the course to make it more accommodating to our students. Through this endowment, the department will be able to continue to offer the field course at minimal (or no) cost to our students, and to protect this fundamental aspect of our curriculum.
