Student Resources

Research & Teaching

• Undergraduate Lab Teaching Assistantship

  Our department regularly employs superior undergraduate students to teach the lab component of our introductory Geography and Geology labs (i.e., Weather and Climate; Geologic Hazards; Physical Geology; and Historical Geology). Lab TAs teach 1-3 labs/semester, have office hours to answer student questions and attend weekly lab TA meetings. Many lab TAs continue on to graduate school and based on their experience as an undergraduate lab TA, receive competitive assistantships/stipends to support their graduate studies. If interested, please see Lab Coordinator:
  
  Ava Fujimoto-Strait | axf011@shsu.edu | LDB 335

• FAST Award Program

  The purpose of the FAST Awards program is to encourage the participation of undergraduate students in discipline-specific scholarly or creative work. Each funded undergraduate team should be able to support 1-3 students working together on a single scholarly or creative project under the mentoring of either one Sam Houston State University faculty member or an interdisciplinary team of 2 or more SHSU faculty members. The student teams are expected to work on their project over approximately 10 weeks, between June 1 and August 15.

• STAPP Award

  All Sam Houston State University undergraduate students who are admitted to degree programs may apply for a STAPP Award to help defray the costs of travel to conferences, meetings, exhibits, or performances where the results of their faculty-mentored research, scholarship, or creative activity will be presented. Students must be enrolled at SHSU at the time of travel.
  
  Past recipients of STAPP Award and faculty mentor:

  • 2019 - Erali Miller (Geography) – Ava Fujimoto-Strait
  • 2019 - Aaliyah Douglas (Geography) – Samuel Adu-Prah
  • 2018 - Hanna Hoffman (Geography) – Ross Guida
  • 2018 - Jade Mehaffie (Geography) – John Strait
  • 2018 - Mandy Truman (Geography) – John Strait
  • 2018 - Agustina Musso-Core (Education) – Ava Fujimoto-Strait

• External Summer Programs

  The STEM Center at SHSU maintains a list of summer external professional, research, and academic opportunities for students in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).

  Past recipient of highly competitive REU:
  2017 - Elizabeth Sosa (Geography) – The LAKES Research Experience – Menomonie, Wisconsin

• Internships

  The American Association of Geographers (AAG) maintains a list of student internship and other opportunities for geography students. Postings for positions are updated regularly.

  The National Science Foundation funds a large number of research opportunities for undergraduate students to work closely on specific research projects with faculty members at host institutions in the U.S. and abroad, through its REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) programs/grants. Summer stipends and most often, travel and accommodation expenses, are covered.

Facilities & Equipment

• Facilities

  • Lee Drain Building – 424,000 sq. ft. building that houses the Environmental and Geosciences department on the 3rd floor. The department has access to classrooms, including large lecture halls, on both the 2nd and 3rd floor during the school year and summer to host various aspects of the bridge program and open house events.

  • Core Lab – 23,461 sq. ft. building that houses well core donated to the department, rock saws for large specimens, a flume, stream table, and table-top working space for 20 students.

  • Lee Drain Geology Annex – 5-room building with lab space to support geology research. The lab includes several rock saws and equipment for making thin sections, as well as a fume hood.

  • Geochemistry Lab – houses equipment for clay mineral analyses, including Rigaku Miniflex 600 X-ray diffractometer, MegaPure distillation unit, high speed centrifuges, a BioLogics ultrasonic homogenizer, McCrone micronizing mill, Labconco freeze dryer, and oven.

  • Paleontology/Sedimentology Lab – includes lane cabinets for specimen storage, Zeiss Discovery V12 microscope with camera attachment, Buehler IsoMet 1000 precision rock saw, and a Buehler Metaserv 2000 grinder and polisher.

  • GIS Lab – 19 high-end machines with current software for spatial and statistical analyses for use by undergraduate and Applied GIS M.S. students.

  • The Remote Sensing Lab – 15 high-end machines appropriate for geospatial work with ArcGIS, ERDAS, and statistical software for data analyses.

  The Department of Environmental and Geosciences has a GIS lab/office at the Woodlands Center. Faculty members use the office to meet students. Graduate students can also use the office space to study or work on GIS projects. The GIS office also houses a plotter printer for large scale printing jobs.

• Equipment

  • Petrographic microscopes – 30 Olympus CX31 polarized light microscopes each equipped with 3 objective lenses.

  • Hitachi S3200N SEM – with an Oxford Energy Dispersive Spectrometer to obtain semi-quantitative elemental analyses of geological samples. Supported by a Ted Pella carbon coater to coat nonconductive samples for analysis.

  • Rigaku Miniflex 600 X-ray diffractometer – with graphite monochrometer and software to do Rietveld refinement.

  • Zeiss Discovery V12 stereomicroscope – with motorized stage and camera attachment. Equipped with Zen and AxioVision software allows for measuring directly on images. Scope has Motorized 12:1 zoom function and LED ring light.

  • Buehler IsoMet 1000 – slow speed rock saw used for making precision cuts.

  • Water Sampling – Hanna Instruments multiprobe for pH, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, and conductivity.

  • Soil sampler – AMS soil sampling kit

  • Velocity meters – Two Flow Watch velocity meters and a USGS Price-Current meter with digital readouts

  • GPS units – 12 hand-held Trimble units and a Trimble GEO7x with sub-meter accuracy

  • Surveying levels – TopCon auto levels with stadia rods for field and stream surveys

Organizations

Geography

Geology

Environmental Science