Category: Departmental News

May 9, 2006 – Should we wait for greater certainty about global warming, or should we take steps immediately to stabilize the climate change that may be occurring?

Dr. David S. Chapman of the University of Utah will address this dilemma in his presentation “Global Warming: Just Hot Air?” when he visits Carleton as this year’s Bernstein Geologist-in-Residence at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, May 16 in Olin 149.

Professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah, and dean of the university’s graduate school, Dr. Chapman says that global trends suggest that allowing “business as usual” on planet earth is a risky path. In his presentation,Dr. Chapman will outline research into how human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases – principally carbon dioxide and methane – to levels far above those that have existed for the past 200,000 years. “We do not know all the details of our complex climate system sufficiently well to predict the exact consequence of greenhouse gas increases on global temperature,” he says.

Dr. Chapman adds that world population has now surpassed six billion and will likely rise to 10 billion in the lifetimes of our children, and that much of this population growth will be in developing countries with a natural desire for an increased standard of living. “That living standard increase will come with increases in per capita energy consumption, and because 90 percent of society’s energy presently is produced by burning fossil fuels, the inevitable population increase and drive towards higher standard of living will simultaneously aggravate the enhanced greenhouse gas condition and, with it, global warming,” he explains.

Dr. Chapman says there is an alternate path. “We could unleash our engineering, economic, and political entrepreneurs to improve energy conservation and efficiency, and move us towards greater use of renewable energy sources,” he says. Ultimately, he believes that this would reduce excessive consumption in developed countries, and provide conditions that would bring worldwide population growth under control.

Dr. Chapman also will speak at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, May 15, in Mudd 73, on “The Geothermics of Climate Change: View from the Underground.” Temperature-depth profiles measured in boreholes contain a temporal record of past changes in surface ground temperature and provide valuable constraints on climatic variations over the last few centuries.

Dr. Chapman is an internationally recognized scholar who studies thermal aspects of the Earth. He has published more than 100 scholarly articles in refereed journals, including Nature, Science and Scientific American. A current focus of his geothermal research is to deduce the pattern of global warming over the past two centuries from detailed measurement of temperatures in drill holes. He has been recognized for his teaching with awards at the department, college and university-wide levels, and in 1999 earned the Hatch Prize for Excellence in Teaching, the highest teaching award at the University of Utah.

April 13, 2006 – We also congratulate the following senior Geology Majors who were recently invited to be Associate Members in Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society: Rachel Brown, Kelsey Dyck, Lee Finley-Blasi, Daniel Jones,and Rebekah Lundquist.

Sigma Xi is an honor society for scientists. Each year a few students are nominated as associate members based on their promise as scientific researchers and demonstrated research ability on comps projects and other independent research. Sigma Xi has over 100,000 members. Members and associate members receive American Scientist, a bimonthly journal. Nationally, Sigma Xi sponsors research awards and conferences. The Carleton chapter of Sigma Xi sponsors a visiting lecturer each year and other occasional events.

April 13, 2006 – Each spring, the geology faculty faces the difficult task of selecting a few students to be Duncan Stewart Fellows. The Duncan Stewart Fellowship was established in 1976 by Daniel Gainey, class of 1949, in honor of Duncan Stewart, professor of geology at Carleton for nearly 25 years.

We select the Stewart Fellows based on a combination of excellence in scholarship, a high level of intellectual curiosity, potential for scientific growth, and involvement in departmental activities. As we make this selection, we realize how fortunate we are to have so many talented, interesting, and impressive students within the department.

We are pleased to announce that Mark Dyson, William Guenthner and Kendra Murray, all class of ’07, will be the 2006-07 Duncan Stewart Fellows. Mark, Willie and Kendra will extend the number of Stewart Fellows to 86. Congratulations and best wishes to you!

April 11, 2007 – Congratulations to Gloria Jimenez ’07 (on the right), who has been named the winner of the highest award for the Association For Women Geoscientists Minority Geoscience Scholarship. The award is the highest of three minority awards and carries a stipend of $3,000.

February 13, 2006 – We are extremely pleased to announce that Cameron Davidson, who has been teaching Mineralogy, Petrology, Structural Geology, Environmental and Science Policy, Introductory Geology, and the Italy Program for the past several years, has been awarded tenure by the college.

Cam earned his B.S. in Geology and Geophysics at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and his Masters and Ph.D. at Princeton. Cam actually came to us from Beloit College in Wisconsin where he taught for seven years and was tenured. His fields of specialization are metamorphic petrology, structural geology and tectonics, and his current research interests include the metamorphic and structural evolution of the middle and deep crust during mountain building and the tectonic evolution of southern and southeastern Alaska and northern British Columbia.

Among his current professional activities, Cam is on the editorial board for the journal Geology, published by the Geological Society of America, and is the Distinguished Lecture Series Coordinator for the Mineralogical Society of America.

February 2, 2006 – Now we can all keep up with the news from Australia! Tune into the blogs reporting on the Coastal Biogeosciences program in Austalia by clicking on the following two links:

• Professor Phil Camill’s official web log, and
• Susan Schnur’s not-so-official student’s-eye-view of the program.

February 2, 2006 – Dr. Patrick O’Brien, Chair of Petrology at the Universitaet Potsdam in Potsdam, Germany, will present two lectures in the Carleton College Geology Department. Dr. O’Brien is touring the United States as a Distinguished Lecturer for the Mineralogical Society of America.

Of Dr. O’Brien’s two talks, one will be in Mineralogy class (9:40 to 10:40 a.m.), and the other at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 24. His lecture titles are “From microscopic to macroscopic: how what we see in the microscope can be used to explain the formation of the Himalaya” and “History written in stone: rocks as good, bad and indifferent eyewitnesses of geological processes.”

Dr. Obrien’s research area is the deciphering of processes occurring during continental collision and associated mountain building. High mountains such as the Himalayas, Rockies or Andes are an impressive active demonstration of the power of the processes acting during collision of the lithospheric plates on the earth’s surface. Geophysical evidence indicates thicknesses of crustal rocks of well above 60 km in these regions – crustal thicknesses much greater than the normally expected 30-40 km found in continental interiors.

Both lectures are free and open to the public.

November 18, 2005 – There’s been a recent Carleton reunion in Antarctica, and Christine Siddoway ’84 sent a photo to prove it. She wrote, “Joel Mayron ’85 flies for the NY Air National Guard to research sites around the world. John Goodge ’80 and I are here doing field work. Although an outdoor environment Antarctic shot wasn’t possible, at least we got a picture of all three of us in McMurdo– and here it is!”

Thanks Christine!

The Network For Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Geology And Natural History Alums provides students and alums with career information, fellowship and support. The network was founded in 1990 and now has 36 members from coast to coast.

The network has the twin objectives of helping reduce isolation among alums and helping to provide a more open, accepting and informative environment on campus for students in geology and related fields.

The network consists of a confidential list of names and addresses, circulated only to members of the network, maintained by Marilyn Yohe ’88, Dan Spencer ’79, and Tim Vick (Geology Department staff member). Inquiries about joining may be addressed to any of them.

LGBT folks and allies might also be interested in the general alumi group called Out After Carleton. We are happy to provide contact information for them as well.

October 24, 2005 – Cathryn Manduca, director of Carleton’s science education resource center, and John McDaris, a geoscience assistant in Carleton’s science education resource center, and Associate Professor of Geology Bereket Haileab presented research reports at the Geological Society of America’s 117th annual meeting in Salt Lake City from October 16 through 19.

Manduca presented two projects titled, “Surveying the Landscape: How Do We Teach Undergraduate Geoscience Courses” and “Observing and Assessing Student Learning: A Workshop Project.” Both are the result of “On The Cutting Edge”, a professional development program sponsored by the National Association of Geoscience Teachers and funded by the National Science Foundation. “Surveying” explains that although professors continue to teach by lecture, they increasing utilize interactive elements such as demonstrations and discussions, and have moved away from tests, focusing instead on problem sets, oral presentations or papers as assessment tools. “Observing” represented a multidisciplinary approach with 42 experts in cognition, education, assessment, and geoscience education identifying the best assessment tools for geoscience students.

McDaris presented “The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami: Using a Disaster as a Teachable Moment”. His study examined the effects that a Web site about the tsunami had on instruction in geology classes and how other such real life events can influence structure and material in geology classes.

Bereket Haileab co-authored a paper entitled “Tehphrostratigraphy of the Okote Complex, Omo-Turkana Basin, Kenya and Ethiopia.” Other authors on the paper included Francis Brown of the University of Utah and Ian McDougall of the Australian National University Research School of Earth Sciences in Canberra, Australia.