CRC’s Geology Club Rocks the Boys & Girls Club

Boys & Girls Clubs serve over a quarter of a million children in California. The social value that Clubs provide to youth, families and communities in California is tremendous and well documented.

CRC has made education a focus of its Community Outreach initiatives and has made it a priority to support programs that inspire students to learn about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The wealth of geological expertise and enthusiasm at CRC along with children’s natural interest in rocks, minerals, fossils, and their state’s wondrous landscapes made the Geology Club a perfect fit to contribute to that focus.

Managed by CRC petrophysicist Katy Larson and geologist Marc Cooper, the program is designed and organized by fellow CRC geologists and focuses on themes relevant to California’s diverse geological landscape covering seven topics: the Rock Cycle, Faults and Earthquakes, Petroleum Geology, Minerals, Volcanoes and Plate Tectonics, Fossils, and Sedimentology. It concludes with a field trip to the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History. The Geology Club is a successful community outreach program first piloted in the summer of 2016. The Geology Club 2019 summer session was executed in entirety at CRC Plaza in Bakersfield and is an enticing model for bringing community outreach to the Plaza.

CRC’s Mark Cooper reflected on the years since the program’s inception and remarked, “It’s important to teach students about STEM education because the jobs of the future are in science, math and engineering.”