Monthly Archives: April 2014

MLK Day Celebration

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Spring semester of 2014  a.k.a second semester at Stockton begun with the celebration of 10th Annual MLK Day. Just like the fall semester, services were offered to the community by the students of Stockton on The Day of Service. The MLK Day was celebrated on 20th January, 2014 and it was organized by the Office of Service Learning.

 Stockton always wants its students to grow socially too. So the services being offered on the Day of Service were not limited to the campus. Four other locations were also offered outside the campus. The event started with motivational speeches by President Saatkamp and other invited guests.

I preferred to stick to the campus for the MLK service Day. Me and my other two friends decided to volunteer for the same service. So, I and Ziwei were signed in with the members of senate by Haleigh. We had to spent the day with girls scouts, touring them around the campus and giving them a glimpse into the college life. We were expecting girls to be 12+ years old, but the girls who came where all younger than five.

As they were all very young we started playing fun games with the girls to keep them engaged and busy. But, then we found out that the girls (all who were five and below) were supposed to be with art club, and a group of older girls (as we had expected) were arriving within next 30 minutes. So, the day of Service started with a little bit of chaos I would say.

After the older girls arrived, we started the program. All the volunteers and girls scouts played games, which even grabbed the attention of the news report who was there to cover the MLK Day celebration. We then toured the girls around the campus and then the senate members presented a presentation on college life. After all that the girls scouts had a service project to do too. They had to make blankets for animals of animal shelter. All the volunteers and the girls scouts members sat around to gather and made the blankets. After that girls scouts left with goodies from Stockton and the volunteers had a reflection session. Everyone agreed that they had a good time.

 It was fun day and fresh start of the semester with two of friends. And also, meeting new people (the senate members) was another plus point of the service.

Geology Field Trip

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On Saturday March 29, 2014 the geology class at Stockton held a field trip.  We went all over eastern Pennsylvania and western New Jersey to look at different soil deposits and rock formations.

Our first stop was to see soil deposits from a river that no longer exists.  We went to a sand pit and looked at the different layers and formations in the cross section that had been cut out.  It was really cool to be able to look at the cross section and see the dip in the layers where the trough of the stream used to flow.  It was also fascinating to see the difference in the deposits from the river.  Each layer was sorted differently, the lower layers were mostly sand but the higher up (or younger the layer) the more pebbles and cobbles there were.

The next stop was in a field with a hill.  This hill was exposed to weathering and we could once again see the different layers in it.  However, this one was mostly fine grained sand and we were able to determine that this layer of deposits belonged blow the first set of deposits we saw.

After that we walked down the road and dug a hole in the ground.  We looked at this clay material and once again were able to determine it’s placement in geologic time.  This deposit belonged under the previous one.  However, you could tell that there had been time missing between the deposits because of the drastic change in material composition.  We then filled up the hole and went to another location.

At the next location we walked down a slope to a river to look at the different rocks in the area and a corresponding fault line.  The rocks in the river were mostly gneiss, a metamorphic rock, and had been disturbed by a fault.  The fault is no longer active but when it was, it created a very prominent mark which is still there to be observed today.  Then we looked at a bridge that crossed the river and the calcite dripping from it.  We analyzed the situation to determine where it is coming from and why.

We stopped for lunch quick and then headed to the last location.  At the last place we stopped, we observed a wall of rock.  This wall had many fractures in it and to describe these fractures, we determined that they were folds in the rocks.  We analyzed samples and determined the rocks at this location to be schist, another type of metamorphic rock.

This field trip was awesome especially for any geology majors out there!  It was a lot of fun because we were walking around in nature and learning about what different processes on earth are and their result.  I would highly recommend geology field trips to anyone who likes to learn and likes nature.