New Lapidary Course Aims to Promote Careers in Geology

Lapidary: the practice of shaping stone, minerals, or gemstones into decorative items through cutting, polishing, and grinding

Unlocking the natural inner beauty of stones, minerals, and gemstones is a practice that has intrigued and captivated the human mind for centuries. Techniques have improved but the basic idea remains the same- chisel and polish until you have something beautiful! The geology program hopes to attract new interest in their program by appealing to people’s natural interest in lapidary, which can provide a path to one of the most personally fulfilling and highest paid science careers. A new course has been developed to go along with a significantly upgraded rock lab to expose students to these opportunities.

The rock lab is a geology facility used to prepare rocks for lab analysis. This lab is for any student interested in unlocking the inner beauty of rocks. Although the rock lab has been around for a long time, it was recently upgraded with new rock saws, polishing equipment, a start of the art jet CNC cutting machine and has been brought up to current safety standards for the purpose of teaching a new introductory course; GEOL 3703 Rock Studio (Understanding Geology Through Lapidary Experiences).

Rock Studio is a discussion and laboratory-based course designed to develop an understanding and appreciation of earth history, earth physical processes and the formation of rocks and minerals through combined class discussions and lapidary-based scientific inquiry experiences. Students will be trained to cut, shape and polish rock materials to investigate the origin, texture, mineralogy, fossil content and historical record as a means of reinforcing fundamental geologic concepts. The course has been submitted as a General Education Science with a lab course, so it is open to any YSU student who has a basic interest in rocks and minerals

Dr. Jeff Dick expects the lab to be fully functional by May 2021. Any student interested in getting involved with the lab just needs to reach out to him at jcdick@ysu.edu