Geology Education

Geology Education imparted at the tertiary level in three universities of Bangladesh. The oldest Geology Department of Bangladesh, which was started on the 23 April 1949, with Professor m osman ghani as its head, is located in the Dhaka University. Dr M Osman Ghani who was also the head of the Department of Soil Science, remained head of Geology Department until 15 April 1956 with a break from the 22 July 1950 to the 16 July 1951, when Mr Sydney James Mayne, an Australian from Sydney was the head of the Department of Geology.

In 1949 the teaching of Geology at Dhaka University began with a two-year BSc (pass) course. The first intake of six students in the two-year MSc course was during the academic session of 1957-58. BSc (honours) course was started from July 1967 at the Dhaka University. The Rajshahi University opened the Department of Geology and Mining in the year 1975 and it started the first year BSc (honours) classes from August of the same year. The jahangirnagar university established the Department of Geological Sciences in the year 1985. In the first two academic sessions the Department offered only minor (subsidiary) courses and the major (honours) courses in geological sciences were offered from the academic session of 1987-88. The Department of Geology presently offers degrees in Bachelor of Science (BS) with Honours, Master of Science (MS), Master of Philosophy (MPhil) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Geology. The Department also offers minor courses for Honours students of other departments. The BS (Hons) is a four-year integrated programme consisting 126 credit hours of theory, practical, field mapping, project and viva voce (oral) courses as majors and 20 credit hours of physics, chemistry and mathematics courses as minors. The MS degree is a one-year programme based either on course work (Group A) or on course work along with research (Group B). Five major Streams are running individually at the MS level. Students are allowed to choose the field of study and research according to their interest.

In the geology departments besides the basic courses such as mineralogy, petrology, palaeontology, stratigraphy, sedimentology, structural geology, geophysics etc, various other courses with emphasis on the applied frontiers of geology are offered. In the above departments, in general some of the applied fields taught are petroleum geology, hydrogeology, geochemistry, clay mineralogy, structural geology, engineering geology, geomorphology, biostratigraphy and palaeoecology, Quaternary geology, remote sensing and photogeology, environmental geology etc. Since geology is a multidisciplinary subject, students of the geology departments at undergraduate level are required to study courses in physics, mathematics, statistics, chemistry and computing.

The departments at Dhaka, Rajshahi and Jahangirnagar Universities have their own research programmes in various fields of geology such as sedimentary geology of the chittagong hill tracts, seismic investigations in some parts of Bangladesh, mineralogical and geochemical studies, structural studies of the bengal basin, palaeoenvironmental reconstruction on the core samples, micropalaeontology of parts of the surma basin, groundwater chemistry, arsenic pollution of groundwater, geology of the Gondwana coal in Bangladesh, studies on hardrock geology of Madhyapara hardrock mine, etc. PhD programmes are also available in all the three geology departments. Geological Society of Bangladesh was established in March 1972 and the Bangladesh Journal of Geology is the annual publication of the Society. In the Bangladesh Journal of Geology most of the publications are from the researches on geological sciences from Bangladesh. [Manzoor Hasan]