CUNY Kingsborough Earth & Planetary Sciences

Yes, we all just felt an earthquake today Friday April 5th, epicenter in New Jersey. Tentatively assigned to the Ramapo Fault.

More info here:
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/at00sbh3yv/executive

Long Island is a sediment pile, seismic waves usually travel poorly through such piles so feeling shaking here is slightly unusual.
You can report shaking you felt at the link above, this helps understand how seismic waves travel.

New York and our region has an "old and cold" crust, so seismic waves can travel through the solid crust further than expected.

earthquake.usgs.gov The Earthquake Event Page application supports most recent browsers, view supported browsers. Or, try our Real-time Notifications, Feeds, and Web Services.

New semester, new...moon? Ha, received this large Geological Globe of the Moon for the new semester.

Today (Jan 4th) is the start of our Winter Session 2020--2021. All classes and labs are still fully online because of the COVID19 emergency.
Our departmental staff are in their on campus offices and our professors are available for contact. If any student is having any problems, please remember to try to contact us, it might take some time to get a response though. Stay safe out there.

Fall 2020 started Sept 12th, all EPS classes including labs are online. There is no word on whether Spring 2021 or Winter 2020 will be in person or online.

FALL 2020

In the course schedule for Fall 2020 on CUNYFirst, our EPS classes are ERRONEOUSLY listed as 'in person'. CUNY and the NYS Government has not decided if the campuses will be open for the Fall semester. Do not take the 'in person' listing there to mean that the courses will actually be able to meet in person.

Summer 2020 started Monday. Because of the ongoing COVID19 pandemic emergency all classes are online for our campus and that includes all of our Earth & Planetary Sciences offerings.

All of our EPS faculty are using Blackboard for their courses. Make sure to email your instructors with questions and to use the discussion board function of your blackboard site to ask for help.

The Kingsborough Community College Food Pantry is still operating. Pre-set "Pantry Bags" are being given out at the front gate of the college, M--F 9am--4pm.
You must be wearing a mask properly and have camps ID ready when you pick up the pantry items.
Only one bag a week will be handed out to a person to make sure it gets to the most number of people.
You can call the pantry for information at 718-368-5411

Some great astrophotography by one of our students:

The gas giant Jupiter is the largest planet in our Solar System. This image was taken earlier today by Santiago Jimenez, a student in EPS 3500 Introducton to Astronomy. Jupiter is the large object in the center, to the left is a moon called Europa. To the right of Jupiter are the moon’s Io and Ganymede. Did you know Jupiter has more than 70 moons!?

The Campus bookstore has textbooks that were ordered by students who then canceled their order. The bookstore has decided to give those textbooks away for free. There are only about 150 books in total available across all subjects on campus.

For Earth & Planetary Sciences, as of right now there are
3 Intro To Earth Science Lab Manuals (for EPS38 BUT online labs differ from what is in this book). Contact your instructor if you need a copy of the lab manual.

Heatmap of COVID-19 infections in NYC (as of March 26th)

As most are hopefully already aware, NYS is transitioning to 'essential workers' only.

Here is information from Kingsborough President Schrader that is relevant to our campus:

"Effective Monday, March 23, the College will suspend all on-campus instruction and the majority of on-campus business operations and student support services.
.. offices that will remain in operation on a staggered schedule, can be found here: https://www.kbcc.cuny.edu/distancelearning/studentserviceshours.html"
During [this time], access to the campus will be closed. [you will need to make an appointment to be let on campus]"

Expect disruptions to even these limited services.

Operating Hours for Campus Offices

Here are instructions for accessing student email on your mobile device:https://www.kbcc.cuny.edu/studres/Documents/AccessingKBCCemail_cell.pdf

It is extremely important that students remain in contact with their instructors during distance learning.

www.kbcc.cuny.edu