SGE 47th Biennial Field Trip Guidebook

Welcome to the Field Trip Guidebook for the participants of Sigma Gamma Epsilon's 47th Biennial Convention, scheduled for April 12, 2025, in the Quad Cities, IL/IA. This guidebook provides detailed information for the field trip, which includes four important stops: the Fryxell Geology Museum at Augustana College, the Black Hawk Historic Site, the Continental Cement Company Quarry, and Wildcat Den State Park. Each location offers a unique opportunity to explore the region's geology and natural history. This guidebook will help you navigate each stop, providing relevant details and references to enhance your understanding of the sites visited during the trip.

The participants of this field trip, part of SGE’s 47th National Convention, will be carrying on a tradition that began 95 years ago. In April 1930, the Gamma Chapter (University of Oklahoma) led a fossil-collecting trip to the Arbuckle Mountains in conjunction with SGE’s 8th National Convention. Two earlier conventions offered local sight-seeing tours to delegates, but the 1930 trip was the first geological field trip held in association with a convention – and a field trip to investigate the local geology has been a part of every SGE biennial convention ever since. If not for a snowstorm, the Iota Chapter (University of Michigan) would have gained this “first” when they hosted the 6th National Convention in April 1926. That field trip, which would have examined Pleistocene glacial deposits in the Ann Arbor area, had to be cancelled. The field trip is typically a convention highlight and the members of Delta Psi Chapter (Western Illinois University) are excited to carry on this important and fun SGE tradition.