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Department of Geology

Upper Crust - Alumni Newsletter
Spring 2006


alumni coordinator: Warren.huff@uc.edu


Dear Alumni:

Welcome to this year’s edition of the Upper Crust. Your responses to our newsletter continue to be overwhelming and much of the copy for this issue has been supplied by you. Keep those cards, letters, photos, and e-mails coming!

We’ve had a wonderful year, particularly in our graduate program. I am pleased to report that in the latest rankings of graduate programs published by U.S. News and World Report, our program in paleontology was ranked seventh in the nation! And it can fairly be said that our Quaternary Geology Program is now the equal of our paleontology/stratigraphy program, in terms of the number and quality of our students. Lewis Owen, who is completing his second year on the faculty since joining us from U. California Riverside, has become fully integrated into our program and is working with Tom Lowell, Dave Nash, and Craig Dietsch to build a highly synergistic program with broad emphases on glacial geology, paleoclimatology, geomorphology, and neotectonics. Renovations to his lab space have been completed, and the new facilities that these labs provide for age dating are being used actively by several students, as well as by Lewis and his collaborators. Our graduate students continue to do us proud with their acquisition of external funding (at least ten external grants just this Spring with several applications still outstanding), their regular presentations at national and international meetings, their continued publication of research results in high-profile outlets, and their success in acquiring jobs when they graduate. With respect to the latter, it is noteworthy that three of Carl Brett’s soon-to-be completed Ph.D. students, Pat McLaughlin, Alex Bartholomew, and Sean Cornell have landed academic positions at Bucknell, New Paltz, and Shippensburg, respectively.


I am also happy to report that we will be hosting the 2009 North American Paleontological Convention (NAPC) on campus during late June of that year. NAPC is a quadrennial event that will likely be attended by some 700 paleontologists from around the world. More about this in next year’s Upper Crust.

An ongoing concern for our Department is our relatively small pool of undergraduate majors. We have come to appreciate that, for the number of geology majors to grow significantly, we need to work proactively to get more prospective majors in the door at very early stages of their academic years (our many 100-level courses are well received and heavily subscribed, but are taken mostly by upperclassmen) . To this end, we laid the groundwork this year for a full-year freshman seminar sequence that will offered for the first time starting this year, and will be geared to students with an interest in the out-of-doors and a natural curiosity for earth history. Importantly, we will be working proactively to recruit students for these courses, starting with a mass mailing to all incoming College freshmen later this spring, and continuing with recruitment efforts at Freshman Orientation sessions this summer. We are confident that we will be able to fill these courses, and we are hopeful that a large percentage of the students who take these courses willbecome geology majors.The end of this academic year marks a significant milestone in the Department: the retirement of Sandi Cannell, who has ably supervised the front office (and then some!) for 16 years. While Sandi had a knack for keeping the complex business of the Department on track, we are especially grateful for her selflessness and extraordinary contributions far beyond her formal job description. Sandi has helped to ensure the well-being of our faculty, staff, and students in so many different ways over the years, and she will be deeply missed.

As most of you already know, 2007 will mark the centennial year of the Department. We are planning to commemorate this milestone with a variety of activities, highlighted by a grand celebration that will take place April 25-April 28 (Wednesday through Saturday). Details of our planned festivities, which are still being firmed up, are provided elsewhere in the newsletter. As these plans are finalized, we will be communicating with you regularly during the coming months in the hope that many of you will want to come to Cincinnati to join in the festivities, and to see firsthand the extraordinary changes in the Department and in the University over the past several years.

Thanks once again to Warren Huff for his extraordinary efforts to maintain contacts with all of you, for his role in organizing the centennial celebration, and for working with Tim Phillips to produce The Upper Crust.

I am looking forward to seeing many of you at our celebration next April!

Warm regards,
Arnie Miller
Professor and Head

 

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

 



Department of Geology
P.O. Box 210013
Cincinnati OH 45221-0013


345 College Court, Cincinnati OH 45221-0013

tel: 513-556-3732    fax: 513-556-6931

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