Member of the Faculty,
PhD Program in Earth and Environmental Sciences, Graduate School, CUNY
Ph.D. Leeds University
Office: SB E-214
Telephone: (718) 997-3328
FAX: (718) 997-3299

Research Interests

My wife and I have been studying the geologic history of the Manhattan Prong for the past thirty years. We have been deciphering the stratigraphic history, and the long and complicated deformational and metamorphic history. The work entails extensive fieldwork, petrography, igneous and metamorphic petrology, geochemistry, structural analysis and, in cooperation with Hannes Brueckner, radiometric age determinations. We are now pulling together the many disparate strands of this study, and are trying to resist the temptation to undertake new projects, no matter how productive they appear to be.

Teaching Philosophy

Before I came to Queens I worked as a geologist with geological surveys and with exploration companies in various countries. At times I was responsible for hiring new geologists and my decisions on what and how I teach has been largely controlled by what we wanted our new hires to be able to do. (For example: to be able to work with minerals and rocks in the field and in the lab with a petrographic microscope; to be able to think and work in 3-D (or 4-D); to be a generalist and be able to map and make sense of whatever they encountered in the field; to be able to collect good reproducible data, and to demonstrate that the data are good.)

Since coming to Queens I have added another teaching focus which is best expressed by the title of Allison Palmer’s article “What my neighbor should know” and by the original design of the course “Natural Resources and the Environment”.

A list of courses taught:

Undergraduate

• GEOL25 Natural Resources and the Environment
• GEOL101 Introduction to Physical Geology
• GEOL201 Earth Materials I (and its predecessors)
• GEOL202 Earth Marerials II (and its predecessors
• GEOL261 Geology in the Field (and its predecessors)

Graduate

• GEOL501 Introduction to Physical Geology
• GEOL522 Geology of New York State
• GEOL701 Physical Geology
• GEOL717/18 Geology in the Field (and its predecessors)
• GEOL752 Geologic Map Interpretation

Selected Publications

1964 Brock, P.W.G., D.C. Gellatly and O. von Knorring, Mboziite, a new sodic amphibole end-member, Mineralogical Magazine., 33, 267: 1057-1065.

1968 Brock, P.W.G., Metasomatic and intrusive nepheline-bearing rocks from the Mbozi syenite- gabbro complex, Southwest Tanzania, Canadian Journal of Earth Science, v.5, p.387-410.

1969 Brock P.W.G., and R. Macdonald, Geological environment of the Bukwa mammalian fossil site, Eastern Uganda, Nature, 223, 5206, p.591-596.

1979 Brock, P.W.G. and D.G. Mose, Taconic and younger deformation and metamorphism in the Croton Falls area, S.E. New York. Geological Society of America,. Bulletin v. 90, Pt. I, pp. 705- 707, and Pt. II, pp. 1158-1195.

2000 Pamela C. Brock & Patrick W.G. Brock, Preliminary Geologic map of the Mount Kisco quadrangle, New York, New York State Museum and Science Service, Geological Survey Open File Report