Tufts students work on The Quad drilling site Professor Garven installing groundwater test pump gauge.~Photos courtesy of Tufts University Ashley Troutman Grant Garven, a Professor of Geology at Tufts University, decided to take his teaching to the next level, and at the same time, inspired his students with an incredible discovery. Garven's hands-on style of teaching is what motivated him to have a system of underground boreholes installed throughout the campus for his students to use as an "outdoor laboratory." While drilling on the third monitoring well, Garven discovered an aquifer, an underground layer of water, fifty feet below the surface of "The Quad." Garven was working with two undergraduate students and one graduate student at the time. "We were very pleased," Garven said. "We never know what we're going to find until we dig or drill, but that's the exciting part of the work we do."

Garven's find was particularly noteworthy, considering that engineers had previously come to the determination that there wasn't an underground water source in the area. In addition, the city of Charlestown built a reservoir on the site in 1861, convinced that no such water source existed.

Underground boreholes are not common at Boston area colleges; however, Garven thought it was important for his students to take what they'd learned from textbooks and experiment with that knowledge in real-world situations. The boreholes are approximately 120 to 200 feet deep, and located at different elevations across the Tufts campus. Garven's students, mostly geology as well as civil and environmental engineering majors, have the unique opportunity to practice operating underground cameras and other state-of-the-art equipment in order to observe and record changes in the water underground.

Before Garven's students were able to get this kind of experience on campus, he had to take them to Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod, where access is limited. On those field trips, the students spent most of their time traveling there and back.

Garven received funding from the Geology Department and the School of Arts and Sciences for the experiment that he called, "a hydrogeologists dream come true." Although students will always benefit from the boreholes, Garven is hoping to drill another shallow hole in the near future.

Garven is an award-winning groundwater geologist who has worked all over the world. He's the founding North American Editor of the Journal of Geofluids and also works as an Associate Editor for the American Journal of Science. Before joining the staff at Tufts University, Garven taught at John Hopkins University for twenty-five years.