Category: Departmental News

We have a supply of geology T-shirts available that can be purchased by mail. The cost is $10 plus $4 postage payable to Carleton College.

The 2006 shirt is dark blue with white ink. On the front it says “Carleton Geology 2006,” and on the back it says “The Dark Crystal… Trial By Stone” with a picture of a quartz crystal. All sizes are available.

There is also a timeless (and priceless!) special shirt for families with multiple generations attending Carleton. The shirt features a diagram of the interior of the Earth with the core labeled Carleton Faculty, and the layers going toward the surface being Post Docs, Graduate Students, Seniors, Juniors and Sophomores, and the blebs of magma (which melted off the subducting plate) rising toward the surface are “Children that go to Carleton.” It is cardinal red with white ink. All sizes are available.

The 2005 shirt is sold out.

The 2004 shirt is an exciting “OSHA” orange with blue ink, the same as we have been painting our rock hammers. The front patch has a take-off on a hammer and sickle shaped from a hand lens and hammer, and the back design is “Oh I’m sorry… am I intruding?” It is 100% cotton, with S and XL available.

The 2003 shirt is sold out.

The 2002 shirt is light blue with black ink, with a picture of a hand pointing to a trilobite and saying in Latin, “This is my favorite animal.” L and XL are available. SPECIAL clearance sale price on this one of $5 per shirt plus mailing cost.

Email Tim Vick at tvick (plus @carleton.edu) or give him a phone call to find out whether your size is in stock.

Two students, Kate Meyer ’09 and Megan Ward ’08 are working in the Geology Department this summer under the direction of Bereket Haileab to develop water quality measurement techniques and new ideas for teaching environmental science in geology classes. They are working within the context of the Carleton Interdisciplinary Science and Math Initiative, funded partly by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

One of the tools they are experimenting with is a new data collecting buoy now floating on Upper Lyman Lake, recently purchased on an NSF grant. The buoy has suspended beneath it a string of temperature sensors spaced at intervals, continuously taking the water temperatures and relaying them by radio signal to a computer in the geology lab in Mudd. Eventually we hope to have the data available on a web page.

Kate and Megan will be working on other water projects as well. They plan to collect water samples from various Rice County lakes and streams and analyze them for nutrients and pollutants.

In the past several years members of Bereket’s Introductory Geology classes have collected and analyzed samples from local surface waters. One of the goals of this summer’s project is to compile those data and integrate them with newly collected data to discern trends over time and assess the present state of the water quality. Bereket hopes they will be able to present their results at the national Geological Society of America meeting next fall in Philadelphia.

An article about the many women that Carleton sends on to physical science graduate programs appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education (May 5, 2006). Reporter Robin Wilson spent two days on campus in April exploring why Carleton—with a tiny undergraduate enrollment compared to Big Ten universities—produces more women who go on to earn doctorates in the physicial sciences than do any of those institutions.

“We don’t lose women along the BA to PhD pipeline,” geology professor Mary Savina ’72 told the Chronicle. “Our women carry on. We show them what real work in the profession is like.”

The story also quotes director of institutional research David Davis-Van Atta ’72, geology professor Cameron Davidson, chemistry professor Gretchen Hofmeister ’85, alumni Sarah Greene ’05 (who will enter a geology graduate program at UW-Madison this fall), Joan Ramage ’93 (who teaches earth and environmental sciences at Lehigh University), and Renee Frontiera ’04 (enrolled in the chemistry PhD program at UC-Berkeley), and juniors Erin Addison (Great Falls, Mont.) and Melina Blees (Davis, Calif.).

Dr. Jan Tullis ’65

February 9, 2006 – The Geological Society of America Division of Structural Geology and Tectonics has awarded Jan Tullis ’65 its Career Contribution Award for 2005. The presentation was at the annual meeting of the GSA in October.

In her citation for the award, nominator Jane Selverstone said, “One experiment at a time, Jan’s work over the last 35 years has quantified relationships between stress, strain rate, pressure, temperature, chemical environment, deformation mechanisms, flow laws, and deformation microstructures in common crustal materials.

“Much of what we know today about crustal rheology and fabric development is built on a foundation of Jan’s experiments.

“In addition to influencing the field through her own work, Jan has played an invaluable role as a mentor to many young scientists from the U.S. and abroad, and as a dedicated advisor to legions of Brown University undergraduates.”

The full citation and Jan’s response is available here.

May 22, 2006 – A workshop on infusing quatitative literacy into introductory earth science courses will be held at Carleton June 26-28.

Introductory courses can demonstrate the quantitative aspects of geoscience while increasing the quantitative literacy of a large population of students, many of whom will take no further science courses. This workshop will help faculty increase the quantitative component of their introductory geoscience courses. Workshop activities will include participation in discussions, creation of introductory exercises and model syllabi, poster and plenary sessions, panels of expert faculty and presentations by participants about effective strategies.

The workshop is open to faculty in the United States teaching entry-level geoscience students from all types of institutions. Prior to the workshop, participants will be asked to submit an activity from their introductory course
that incorporates quantitative skills; this activity will be discussed and modified during the workshop. Materials generated at the workshop will be published on the Teaching Quantitative Skills website housed at SERC (Carleton College).

The workshop goals include discussing the role(s) introductory geoscience courses can play in developing students quantitative literacy, the challenges of increasing the quantitative component of geoscience courses including overcoming math anxiety and teaching students with a wide variety of quantitative skills, demonstrating ways in which faculty have effectively incorporated quantitative activities in introductory courses, generating strategies for reinforcement of quantitative skills using multiple activities throughout the course, and sharing mechanisms for assessing quantitative skills and literacy.

The workshop will be led by Cathy Manduca of Carleton College, Eric Baer ’91 of Highline Community College, Seattle, Washington, and Jen Wenner ’92 of the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh, Oshkosh, WI. The workshop is funded by the National Science Foundation.

Gloria Jimenez ’07 reports on the experiences of the Australia Biogeoscience Program, including surfer trash, Vegemite, budgie smugglers, shark bites, and bioluminescent dinoflagellates.

One might say they go to look at rocks. But for geology students at Carleton, these semi-annual trips are much more than that. They’re about seeing firsthand what goes on beneath our feet.

[Reprinted from The Kenyon Leader]

May 17, 2006 – Geology 258, the Geology of Soils, is a class that is taught only once every three years at Carleton College in Northfield, and this year the students took a field trip to Isaacson Implement in Nerstrand and two area farms to obtain a firsthand look at what they have been learning from their textbooks.

According to Mary Savina, McBride chair of Geology and Environmental Studies, the trip served several purposes for the students. In addition to meeting with an expert from the University of Minnesota Extension Service, Brad Carlson, they were able to speak with farmers from a practical standpoint.

This helps them understand that concepts like “soil structure” have real significance to crop growth and soil erosion, Savina said. [They] got immersed in a world where they see the interconnections among farm equipment, farm economy, soil fertility, crop choices, animal agriculture and other parts of the day-to-day farm life.

The class visited with area farmers John Bonde and Mark Bauer, whose farms are located near Nerstrand. The two farmers spoke with the students about equipment, nutrient management and fertilizer, soil erosion and compaction, soil health, soil types, soil conservation structures, drainage and tiling.

It’s hard, from outside of agriculture, to get a sense for the kinds of decisions that must be made each week of the year and the consequences of those decisions. Students invariably come away from these trips much more knowledgeable, Savina explained, adding that one student humbly said he didn’t realize how much the farmers do everyday.

This was the first time that Savina brought her students, who come from all over the country and very few have farming backgrounds, to the Nerstrand area, as other farm sites in the past have been closer to Northfield and Faribault.

Brad and I have worked closely on making these field trips for several years, she added. Brad made all the arrangements with Isaacson’s and the farmers for our visits. I’m immensely appreciative of him. This kind of experience can’t be done in a classroom.

While at Isaacson Implement, the students were able see the various types of equipment commonly used by farmers of today.

May 10, 2006 – William Moseley, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Macalester College, will speak Thursday, May 11 at 4:30 in Mudd 73 on “Poverty-Environment Interactions and the Political Ecology of Cotton Production in Mali.”

Many researchers in geography, development and economics believe that the poor and hungry are most affected by environmental change, in part because they will often destroy their immediate environment in order to survive.Dr. Moseley’s talk examines this hypothesis, in the cotton-producing area of Sahelian Mali. His work pays particular attention to the proximate and ultimate causes of soil degradation, to the interactions between the food economies of relatively rich and poor households, and to the links between national policy and local production strategies.