A series of annual Summer Schools for PhD-level students is being taught on topics that emphasize integration of the geological disciplines. The courses are part of a larger community-driven effort - Integrated Solid Earth Sciences - to promote a new, integrated way of approaching teaching and research in the solid earth sciences. Examples o f course topics are Rheology of the Lithosphere, Geochronology Applied to Tectonics and Petrology, GeoInformatics, and Numerical and Scale Model studies of Deformation and Metamorphism, topics that are experiencing rapid advances and are exemplary of multi-disciplinary research fields. Fifteen to twenty senior graduate students are attending each 5-day long school in which expert scientists are presenting half-day long overviews, using a combination of lectures, computer demonstrations and/or hands-on demonstration. Special emphasis is given to the integration of disciplines through exercises and lectures. Field trips are an essential aspect of such schools as they provide venues for more open discussions about approaches that could be taken for field-based research. Topics of summer schools are also the same topics explored in the annual Integrated Solid Earth Sciences Forum held in association with a national scientific meeting (e.g, Geological Society of America, American Geophysical Union).
