All good things must come to an end, including the CUR Business Meeting.  Today was a half-day of sessions, ending right before lunch.  Just like yesterday, CUR Councilors met with their committees and with their discipline divisions.  The GeoCUR group had some great discussions and have some exciting plans for the upcoming year.  For example, I will be doing a complete rebuild of the GeoCUR website, we will begin an Undergraduate Student Research Award, and we hope to work with the National Association of Geoscience Teachers to have a special themed issue of the Journal of Geoscience Education highlighting undergraduate research as a teaching practice.  It will be alot of work to accomplish all of this, but our group certainly has the passion to see all of these things through.

I can’t emphasize enough how unique, professional, passionate, and FUN the GeoCUR group is.  Not only am I always excited to see my friends and fellow geoscience instructors, but I also look forward to something that only the geoscientists add to their name badges – can you tell what it is from the image below?

A typical name badge for a GeoCUR Councilor – note how we identify each other as geologists!

Yes, that sticker in the upper corner gives it away – “RX R US.”  This tradition of adding the RX R US sticker to our name badges was started by Mike Nelson at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.   The CUR biennial conference was held at UW that year (2004), and the geologists were trying to identify who each other were in attendance (the CUR conference badges do not list disciplines).  So Mike disappeared to his office one day and came back with these stickers for us to wear.  We have kept the tradition up ever since.

So, what does RX R US mean?  In geology, we try to shorten words when we are taking notes while doing research out in the field.  “RK” is the abbreviation for “rock,” and “RX” is the abbreviation for “rocks.”  Therefore, as a group, RX R US!  The good/sad news is that I won’t see my fellow RK-ers until the Geological Society of America Annual Meeting at the end of October in Denver, Colorado.

Until then, we will all “rock on!”