Second Oklahoma Evolution Road Trip
Dr. Stan Rice and Dr. Gordon Eggleton
Oklahoma Scholar Leadership Enrichment Program
March 16-20, 2015
University of Oklahoma Biological Station, Lake Texoma
This year, the road trip will be an upper-level college course open to all Oklahoma undergraduates. All information is or will be available on the OSLEP web site (http://www.oslep.org). For an overview of the course, see http://oslep.org/Rice. The course syllabus will be posted shortly; a draft syllabus is available upon request from Dr. Stan Rice (srice@se.edu). Each campus has a local OSLEP coordinator who will arrange student registration (http://oslep.org/campus_contacts). This course will give students an opportunity to explore evolutionary concepts for themselves and to see fossils, dinosaur footprints, and a creationist museum. The textbook will be available online.
Oklahoma and Texas are renowned for a lot of things, but two of them are creationism and the abundance of evidence for evolution. That is, the very places where creationism is strongest are the places with some of the best field evidence of evolution. This class, based at the University of Oklahoma Biological Station at Lake Texoma, will explore the outdoors of southern Oklahoma and north-central Texas for evidence of evolution in living creatures, geology, and fossils. The class will also visit museums to learn about natural history, as well as ideologically-driven views of natural history. On this trip, let’s go learn and talk about both creationism and the field evidence for evolution.
Reading provided by OSLEP
Dr. Stanley Rice has published four popular science books, two of them about evolution (www.stanleyrice.com). He is professor of biological sciences at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, where he began teaching in 1998. Stan is the president-elect of both Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education and the Oklahoma Academy of Sciences. Also participating will be geologist Dr. Gordon Eggleton, professor emeritus at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. Gordon led field trips to all of the locations that we will visit. Dr. Rice can tell you about most of the things that are alive, and Dr. Eggleton can tell you about most of the things that are dead.