Registration for SUMMER 2025 ESTEP Online Course
is OPEN!
TO REGISTER: Contact Sue Bertsch at the MSU Moorhead Registrar's Office via email (susan.bertsch@mnstate.edu). Include which courses you wish to register for, and she will send you instructions for how to register for these FREE, 3 graduate credit courses! Please read below to see requirements and details.
Middle School (6th grade) Teachers! Dive in and improve your content and pedagogy knowledge in these key earth and space science areas! Our courses are designed for TEACHERS and will be invaluable as you develop your course, and begin working on transitioning to a student sense-making approach!
High School Teachers! GET READY! New legislation states that all students must complete one credit of Earth and Space science in high school to graduate. These courses will help deepen your understanding of the key content areas and 3-dimensional pedagogy. Along with our summer bootcamps, these courses will help those of you working toward passing the required content MTLE exam to add additional licensure in 9-12 Earth and Space Science.
Earth Science Extras (Earth Science Essentials 2)*
Dr. Russ Colson
May 21 - July 7 2025
This course provides a deeper exploration of human interactions with our environment and more advanced ideas of astronomy than addressed in Earth Science Essentials (ESE1). Selected upper-level concepts include soils and erosion, climate change, surface and groundwater hydrology, pollutant migration, resource distribution, phases of the Moon, seasons, H-R diagrams, nucleosynthesis, Keppler's laws, stellar distances, and others The course also offers a brief survey of the geology of Minnesota, including some review of plate tectonics, geological mapping, and paleogeographic reconstruction, with examination of selected features in northwest, southwest, southeast, east and northeast Minnesota. Like ESE1, this course is comprised largely of self-learning online experiences that address state licensure standards in earth science and is intended as partial preparation for teaching earth science at the high school level.
*Prerequisite for this course is successful completion of Earth Science Essentials (ESE1).
The Important Details
This course is offered through the Continuing Studies Department at Minnesota State University Moorhead. It is a 3 credit, graduate level course, and while mostly asynchronous, requires approximately 4-8 hours of work per week. A synchronous final project share out is also a requirement of this course. The date and time for this meeting will be determined once the course has begun.
Please contact Dana Smith at dasmedu2018@gmail.com with any questions.
Funding for this project was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR).
Minnesota science teachers should know about:
