Where in The World is Geology Now?

Where in the world have Geology faculty members and graduate students been?

No need for GPS: If you're curious, take a quick trip to the Geology/Physics Building. Step off the sixth-floor elevator and you'll quickly "map" a colorful rundown.

The department had a huge, unused bulletin board and a large world map, said Warren Huff, professor.

Geology's Warren Huff explains a new map project created by graphic designer Tim Phillips. The map shows locations of ongoing UC Geology projects around the globe.

It only made sense to let the world, so to speak, know about the global scope of UC faculty and students' work. So, though he didn't travel far from his office, the department's graphic designer, Tim Phillips, went to work highlighting those efforts.

"I was chatting with Tim and said, 'Why don't we put up something showing where UC geologists are working?'" Huff said. "We really are everywhere … I looked at this and thought, 'Where aren't we?'"

About a month ago, letters were sent out asking for locations of current projects.

Now, Phillips' simple yet effective "Where in the World Have You Been?" design features colored strings which emanate from the icon for UC, stretching to seven continents and a wealth of research.

At the end of the strings, more than six dozen flags – tagged with names and topics of research – denote locations of current projects of 14 faculty and about 30 graduate students.

A new "Where in the World Have You Been?" map flags UC Geology project sites worldwide.

Facing the map, to the south, Lewis Owens' work on the "Glaciation of King George Island" is flagged in the Southern Shetland Islands. To the east, you'll find a flag for Attila Kilinc's "Petrology of Kilauea Volcano" in Hawaii. North and west, Thomas Lowell's name is on the markers in Scorsby Sund, Greenland, for "Ice Core Interpretation & Little Ice Age Chronology," and on Mt. Cook, New Zealand, for "Late Glacial & Holocene Climate Change."

Huff landed on the easily updated map, too, with flags in Estonia, Namibia and Austria, among other places. And just looking at the flags is a lesson in cultural diversity.

"In Austria, I'm working with an Irish woman married to an Italian man," he said with a laugh.

"We do a lot of collaborative work in Geology," he said. "We very seldom have a single person on a project. One of the things I've learned is that if you want to go somewhere in the world and study something, you need to work with people in that area."