The Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences has an established reputation of excellence. Many graduating seniors have gone directly to work in environmental consulting firms, mineral resource companies, or the energy industry, while others have been accepted at some of the most prestigious graduate programs in the country, including the California Institute of Technology, University of Chicago, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and various Big Ten universities.

Traditionally, the training of geologists has included a large amount of field experience. Hope College is ideally situated to study glacial geology, sedimentology, geomorphology, limnology and environmental issues. To broaden the spectrum of field experience, students commonly take longer trips to examine the geology of other areas such as the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, and the Ohio River Valley in Indiana and Kentucky. In addition to these trips, each year the regional geology field trip gives students the opportunity to visit and investigate the geology of a North American region. In the past, regional field trips have gone to the Colorado Plateau; Big Bend, Texas; Death Valley, California; Southern Arizona; New Mexico; and the Bahamas.?

We are well-equipped for teaching and research. In addition to petrographic microscopes, the department has a geographic information system (GIS) computer laboratory, X-ray diffractometer, thin section preparation laboratory, ion chromatograph, gas chromatograph, infrared Fourier transform spectrometer, UV-visible light spectrometer and access to a scanning electron microscope.