Dear Alumni:
Happy New Year!
Sadly 2008 ended with the loss of our dear colleague Dr. Kees Dejong. Kees joined our faculty in 1970 and he was a valued and loved member of our department, college and university. He is greatly missed by all.
Last year we saw the official retirement of Professors John Grover and Madeleine Briskin. Fortunately for us all, John and Madeleine are still very active in our department and continue to teach their core courses and participate in many of our activities.
As you probably know, last September I took over from Professor Arnie Miller as Head of Department while we search for an external Head. In the short five years that Arnie was Head he led the department to great heights, culminating with our paleontology program being ranked by U.S. News and World Report as seventh in the nation! Furthermore, Arnie was fundamental in helping us to focus and develop our strength in Quaternary geology and geology, and stimulating and encouraging everyone he interacted with during his tenure as Head. Arnie is currently on sabbatical and is spending much of his time helping to organize the 2009 North American Paleontological Convention (NAPC), which will be held on our campus during late June. NAPC is a quadrennial event that will likely be attended by some 700 paleontologists from around the world. Arnie will be back in full strength and fully refreshed in September.
Our graduate program continued to flourish in 2008. I never cease to be impressed with the quality of the graduates. Most obtain external funding for their research and it is not uncommon for our graduates to have had several research papers published in international peer-reviewed journals before graduating. Furthermore, they help drive our program and stimulate much of what we do in teaching and research. Please look at our web page link to “Rolling Rocks” if you would like to learn more about these achievement and our activities. Rolling Rocks is our informal newsletter that we circulate every week to our students, staff and faculty.
Our undergraduate program is thriving, and we have increased our number of Majors from ~25 to 56 over the last three years. We attribute this to the revived interests in geology as a consequence of increased awareness of the importance of environmental geology and a new freshman seminar series that we have recently developed. In the coming year, we aim to expand our student enrolment by developing double majors in Geology-Geography and Geology-Biology.
Please keep us informed of your activities, which we will add to this year’s edition of our newsletter, the Upper Crust.
Thanks to Warren Huff for his extraordinary efforts to maintain contacts with all of you.
Warm regards,
Lewis Owen
Professor and Acting Head
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Newsletter
Contents
• Faculty & Staff News
• Alumni/ae Reports
• Geology/Geography
• Geology - Geography Dept.
• Centennial Celebration
• Himalayan Field Trip
• Colloquim Lecture Series
• Spring Awards Banquet
• Student Presentations & Awards
• Student These Defended
• New Freshmen Seminar
• The Global Laboratory
• GSA Alumni Reception
• Rieveshal Geo Lecture
Departmental Fieldtrips
•Himalayan
Field Trip. September 2007, led by Lewis Owen and Craig Dietsch.
Contact: Lewis.Owen@uc.edu or
Craig. dietsch@uc.edu
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