We encourage students of all backgrounds to learn more about how the land, water, and air around us directly affect our lives, whether by taking one course, or several, or a concentration program with independent research. Our faculty offer courses in which they share their expertise and enthusiasm for the geological sciences with non-science and non-geology concentrators. These courses can be an enjoyable and meaningful part of a liberal arts education at Brown, in part thanks to the Department's strong focus on developing students' communication and critical thinking skills.

The Department is one of the most active in developing and providing First Year Seminars, which emphasize interdisciplinary pursuits that reach beyond the physical and biological sciences into the humanities and social sciences. These freshman seminars offer such varied course topics as Global Environmental Change; Patterns in Nature, in Society; Volcanoes: Windows Into the Deep Earth; and Monsters of the Abyss: Oceanography & Sea Tales.