New GeoWorkforce Degree Rethinks Undergrad Training
Fall 2021
What is the future of geosciences? It’s a complex question, but one national trend is clear, fewer and fewer students are choosing Geo majors. Yet, without geoscientists, our communities will be less equipped to handle our challenges. From hazards mitigation and environmental remediation, to critical minerals and renewable energy, geoscientists will play a critical role in a world modified by climate change and technology. To recruit and prepare undergraduate students for a rapidly expanding job market, USU and Uintah Basin Technical College partnered and gained state funding to create the GeoWorkforce Program, a new Bachelor’s degree emphasis in our department.
Paul Jamison Establishes Student Scholarship, Becomes Collections Manager
The GeoWorkforce program has applied coursework that expose students to the tools, protocols, and ethical considerations used in a wide variety of geoscience fields. Starting with a new, junior-level “GeoWorkforce Techniques” course this Fall semester, we plan training in site characterization, water, air, and soil sampling, core analysis, database management, GIS, and communication and jobseeking skills. Two novel components of the program are learning objectives that lead to the ASBOG Fundamentals of Geology exam and the involvement of an alumni Industry Advisory Council, which helped identify components of training and may provide mentorship and networking opportunities. Our goal is to provide USU Geo undergraduates with the tools for a changed job market, and to boost enrollment, because the world needs more geoscientists!
Talk about giving! Last year, Paul (BS 1982) and Michelle Jamison provided a gift to the department establishing the Jamison Geosciences Education Scholarship. An undergraduate student will receive this scholarship for the first time this coming spring. But that is not all. Paul has long been a professional in finding and preparing fossils – feeding his passion for dead critters and sometimes operating a business-on-the-side. This led to Paul donating a spectacular mosaic of rock-and-fossil tiles, which now greets all who climb the main stairwell in our Geology Building. There is more. Paul now volunteers as our Collections Manager, getting our specimens organized, spearheading major upgrades to displays in our Museum of Geology, and providing sage guidance to our Geology Club and outreach efforts.
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Department Head Note: Geo Mobilizes for Inclusivity and Diversity Last academic year was memorable, to say the least. There was the pandemically altered course delivery, a mostly empty campus and building, and time spent constantly changing operations. But I will also remember last year for our launch into action to improve our diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI). Nationwide and globally, 2020 was marked by protests stemming from strife and tragedy for people of color. The halls of academia received calls for action, from our professional societies, funding agencies, scientific journals and students. Geoscience has a serious DEI problem. Among the sciences, we have the very lowest representation of people of color. This has not improved over the past several decades, despite the issue being well known. Lack of inclusivity and representation contributes to geology’s overall identity and marketing crisis. As we look and sound less and less like the rest of society, it fundamentally threatens the pertinence of geoscience. Here are the three biggest steps USU Geo has taken:
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We formed a DEI Working Group of students, staff and faculty that meets and works regularly to improve our operations and actions. With their leadership, we have set new policies and have made our efforts more visible – see our new webpages: geo.usu.edu/information/inclusivity-
resource
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The DEI Working Group conducted our first-ever survey of all current people in the department plus our alumni. The key results of this “climate” survey -- asking about people’s experience in our department -- are posted on our DEI webpage.
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Many faculty in the department formed a “pod” and participated in NSF-sponsored, nationwide, Unlearning Racism in the Geosciences (URGE) training in spring of 2021. The results include an action plan to improve our situation, a new departmental Code of Conduct, and more.
What a trip it has been over the past year or two! It is a lot of work, but our department needs to be behind the wheel and not in the back seat when navigating these changes toward a better future. Drop a line sometime, Joel
Dr. Penman’s New Lab and Students are on a Voyage to Reconstruct Earth History New faculty member Don Penman hit the ground running last academic year, setting up an isotope geochemistry lab and recruiting new students to study the geochemistry of the sedimentary record. Don’s research group takes advantage of the sedimentary archives from decades of scientific ocean drilling to explore how the Earth System’s biogeochemical systems have functioned over time. Step one is processing sediment core taken from hundreds of meters below the seafloor to isolate the carbonate and silica shells of single-shelled plankton. Step two is using analyzing the trace element and isotopic composition of those microfossils – these proxies contain a record of the environmental properties of the seawater and the ancient climate they lived in. The workhouse of the lab is an Agilent 8900 triple-quadrupole ICP (inductively-coupled plasma) mass spectrometer, which can measure elemental and isotopic abundances at extremely high precision and low detection limits. Step three is figuring out what the data mean! Don and his students are able to reconstruct the temperature, pH, and biogeochemical cycling of ancient oceans. Of particular interest are ancient warming events like the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 56 million years ago, and the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum, 40 million years ago. Understanding the response of the Earth System to changes in the past will help us understand climatic, chemical and ecological changes in our future.
Alumnus Dan Rogers Pledges Foundational Gift for Endowed Professorship
Daniel Rogers (MS 1986) has a passion for understanding the Earth, the processes that shape it, and especially for sustainable stewardship of the environment. He pursues these goals with scientific rigor and amazing skill as a communicator and author. We like to think that Dan gained some of these good habits during his time here at USU under the guidance of his advisor Peter Kolesar as well as J. Stewart Williams, Bob Oaks and others. Now, he has come full circle, setting up a prestigious future for faculty in our department. This year, Dan arranged a planned gift of $1M from his estate, which will establish the J. Stewart Williams Professorship in Geosciences at USU. Dan started his career with an environmental consulting firm, and then moved on to work for Amstead Industries, where he is now the Director of Environmental Affairs. While working, raising a family, exploring the planet, and facing a number of life challenges, Dan authored and edited books on Urban Watersheds, Environmental Compliance and Sustainability from a global perspective, an Environmental Compliance Handbook, and the Environmental Geology of metropolitan Detroit. We appreciate that Dan has stayed in touch with the department – meeting with us at national conferences, serving on our Advisory Board, and providing insights to help the department shape a 21st century curriculum. Over the years, Dan and his partners established the endowments for our Kolesar Scholarship and the Oaks Scholarship and given regularly to other funds. This planned gift for the Williams Professorship is the first of its kind in our department and it will be transformational. It creates a future where select faculty can gain the time and resources to take their research and scholarship to the next level, allowing us to retain and attract the very best scientists. This gift is one of the major results of our Summit Initiative to build our endowment and provide funding to support students and faculty in teaching and research. Thank you, Dan!
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Dr. Ault’s Research Lab Setting New Benchmarks in Geo Time flies, and over the past 7 years that Dr. Alexis Ault has been with us, she has set new records for achievement here in the Geo Department. Alexis was recently awarded tenure and promotion to Associate Professor and is now back from her first sabbatical. Her years as an Assistant Prof. were speckled with accolades, receiving an NSF CAREER award, being the inaugural recipient of the Chuck and Nancy Naesar Early Career Award from the International Standing Committee on Thermochronology, and being named our Researcher of the Year for the College of Science. Over this time, Alexis’ research group has grown to include award-winning postdoctoral researchers, PhD and MS students, and undergraduate researchers who continue on to new professional successes.
undergraduate Madison Taylor, a recipient of a USU Peak Fellowship, combined hematite nanotextures and thermochronology to document the propagation of earthquake ruptures toward the surface along the active Hurricane fault in southwestern Utah UT. So far, Alexis’ CAREER grant research has been published in two Geology papers and seven other publications. Alexis has also received a series of Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) grants and a new NSF grant for other research directions. This includes study of how hematite fault surfaces promote slow-slip, which may accommodate and even consume energy given off during large earthquakes. Alexis and her research group, led by current MS student Alex DiMonte and PhD student Jordan Jensen, are exploring this along the southern San Andreas fault. Alex spent this past summer doing slow-slip experiments, comparing data to natural faults. Alexis is also developing new thermochronology tools to take the temperature of faults during earthquakes, focusing on an ancient strand of the San Andreas (the Punchbowl fault) with graduate student Ema Armstrong, who has received a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Because of her pioneering research developing innovative applications of thermochronology, Alexis is in very high demand. She is frequently on the speaker circuit, has coauthored multiple review papers on thermochronology, and has contributed to AGU’s Grand Challenges in Earth and Space Sciences. Plus, she is a heckuva mountain biker. We are lucky to have here at USU!
see what’s new at: https://alexiskault.weebly.com/
Dr. Ault’s 5-year CAREER grant is nearly wrapped up. The research it has supported has placed new constraints on faulting during the earthquake cycle and understanding earthquake mechanics. Alexis and former PhD student Robert McDermott, former MSc student Leah Houser, and former postdoc Dr. Margo Odlum, combined thermochronology
(radioisotopic dating sensitive to temperature) with textural and geochemical data from fault surfaces. Former postdoc Dr. Gabriele Calzolari conducted experiments on hematite at Brown University, where he was able to make fault-mirrors in the lab similar to those observed along the Wasatch fault -demonstrating that the helium measured for dating is lost from hematite crystals due to friction-generated heat. Former
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Geology Club and friends out fossil hunting
Professor John Shervais Retiring Like a Phase Diagram Our esteemed igneous petrologist Mr. Ophiolite and driller-of -basalts, the dude in a Hawaiian shirt and now sporting a gray ponytail – is in the midst of “phased” retirement. Same as anorthite continuously transitions to albite, John is transitioning from his faculty duties and starting his next phase. John is teaching his last section of Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology this semester, and he will be fully retired after the 2022-23 academic year. A California man through and through, John received his PhD at UC-Santa Barbara in 1979. He landed his first faculty job at the University of South Carolina in 1984 and worked through the ranks to full professor. In 2000, he was hired by USU Geology as our Department Head, a role he served in for a full decade. John ushered several critical changes in our dept in his time as Head. With John’s leadership we started our alumni Advisory Board, we added the PhD and MS-Applied Environmental Geosciences degree programs, and our department grew its faculty ranks. John also guided us through the great recession and increased our department focus around our research and analytical capabilities. John also has been a valuable colleague and a great mentor to our students. His core teaching has been mineralogy, petrology, and popular elective courses in volcanology and ore deposits. John has mentored 24 grad students, 7 of them PhDs. Dr. Shervais is a strong engine of research, recognized as a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and a Fullbright Fellow. Indeed, as his time as Head drew to a close, John went into research overdrive. From 2010-2015 alone, he brought in a series of DOE and Intercontinental Drilling Program grants totaling $7M – setting department records. His best-known papers are on ophiolites, including an early publication that has been cited more than 2500 times in the scientific literature. John has globetrotted around the convergent margins of the world, and he has also focused on drilling holes into the Snake River Plain and leading research on International Ocean Discovery Program expeditions. In fact, as he phases out of parts of academic life, he will be continuing his research, including another IODP mission in spring of 2022. We wish John great expeditions and adventures to come and look forward to him continuing his research!
Dr Kelly Bradbury and Hamish Jackson (an M.F.A. graduate student) spent a week in the field, lab, and studio integrating geology and ceramics with students from NASMP (above). They created hand-made beads and bowls (right) from various clay sources found locally, some derived from fault zones.
NASMP 2021
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Student Highlights Hannah Cothren
Hannah Cothren is a second-year MS student being advised by Carol Dehler. She is working on NSF-funded research right here in our Bear River Range on the upper Neoproterozoic and lower Paleozoic strata. Hannah came to us from Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC and she hit the ground hiking and doing field work right away in the summer of 2020 during the pandemic. Her thesis is also supported by a USGS EDMAP grant, and she has received multiple student scholarships from the Four Corners Society Geological Foundation, the Tilford Fund from Association of Engineering Geologists, the Wyoming Geological Association, and has received a departmental J. Stewart Williams Scholarship. Hannah's fieldintensive research project includes mapping the bedrock geology of the Naomi Peak Quadrangle, with the aid of llamas. The geologic map will be used for land management as well as recreationists and geologists. Hannah’s Thesis also focuses on two Cambrian projects that involve trilobite biostratigraphy, carbon-isotope chemostratigraphy, and zircon geochronology. Hannah plans to pursue a PhD after finishing her MS – she is a very hard working student (except for when she makes llamas carry her gear) and we are thankful she is here for a time in USU-Geo!
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Tanner Nielsen Tanner Nielsen loves maps. He is a local, hailing from Nibley here in Cache Valley, where he developed an appreciation for the outdoors. Following upon a star performance in our 2021 summer field camp, he will be graduating this fall with an Applied Environmental Geoscience emphasis. His path as a senior was aided by a John M. Branch Scholarship from the department, and he is working on plans to go to graduate school in the geosciences. Tanner has been involved in multiple research experiences, showing his willingness to take on diverse intellectual challenges. Over the last two summers, Tanner spent multiple days in the field with Carol Dehler and Hannah Cothren as a field assistant. He also identified and digitized fault scarps utilizing LiDAR data under the supervision of Susanne Janecke. This year, he has worked on undergraduate research in Don Penman’s lab identifying individual species of foraminiferids and preparing them for stable isotope determination. And finally, Tanner has been employed as a GIS and field technician with USU’s Ecogeomorphology and Topographic Analysis Lab documenting stream-riparian conditions in the West. What’s next?
Rock-n-Fossil Day: Virtual Style Although social gatherings have been restricted over the past year, Rock-n-Fossil Day moved forward with a virtual twist. Rather than being a day event with hands-on activities and dino cookies, it took place over a week and included videos, a song, and at-home, hands-on activities. Some of the activities are still available at geo.usu.edu/activities/rock-and-fossil-day. Our next event on February 26, 2022 will be back to in-house fun with lots of scientists to ask questions of and lots of dino cookies to eat.
A Blue Office Turning Green USU has been working on sustainability and part of the initiative has been a Green Office program. The Geosciences Department has joined, and we are proud to announce that we are Gold Level certified! There were several things we were already doing, and there were new resources found that helped us up our game. We will continue to move forward with supporting sustainability and being stewards of our planet.
Field Camp 2021 Geology Seniors this year were able to experience a form of field camp. While they weren’t able to have long, over-night trips, there were still several multi-day projects where they refined skills they have learned over the past four years. (pictures: top right, Willard Hazards project; middle right, High Creek project; bottom, Hyde Park project)
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Graduate Students Completed 2020-2021 Greg Agyan, MS AEG, Taphonomy of Late Jurassic (Tithonian)
Morrison Formation Apatosaurus sp. Vertebrae Found Associated with Teeth from Allosaurus sp. and Ceratosaurus sp., and body size extrapolation
to all who have donated to any of the USU Geosciences Department Funds
(Dr. Benjamin Burger) Ema Armstrong, MS, Multi-Proxy Approach to Robustly
Capture Earthquake Temperature Rise at the Punchbowl Fault, California (Dr. Alexis Ault & Dr. Kelly Bradbury) Matt Ellison, MS, The Biggest Snowball Fight in Earth History:
Stratigraphy, Facies Analysis, and Geochronology of the Pocatello Formation (Dr. Carol Dehler) Ed Grasinger, MS AEG, Exploring Questions of Tectonic
Geomorphology in the Bear River Range, Utah Using Terrain Analyses and Reconstruction (Dr. Joel Pederson) Tomsen Reed, MS, Hazard Analysis of a Segment of Highway
SR-12 through Bryce Canyon National Park, Southern Utah (Dr. Tammy Rittenour)
Our Alumni Advisory Board Current members of the Advisory Board are: Angela Isaacs (Chair)—Sinclair Oil & Gas Stephanie Carney—Utah Geological Survey Carrie Elliott—U.S. Geological Survey Dawn Hayes—Petroleum Consultant Al Jones—Browning Foundation Steven Kerr—Millcreek Mining Group Mike Lowe—Utah Geological Survey Karen Merritt—Cache County School District Craig Nelson—Western GeoLogic LLC Elizabeth Petrie—Western State Colorado University Caleb Pollock—Pioneer Natural Resources Dan Rogers—Amsted Industries Inc
Dominique Shore, MS, Spatial and Temporal Patterns of River
Incision and Terrace Deposition in Response to Climate and Tectonics in Southern Taiwan (Dr. Tammy Rittenour) Kayla Smith, MS, Geologic Characterization of the
Nonconformity Interface Using Outcrop and Drillcore Analogs: implications for Injection-Induced Seismicity (Dr. Kelly Bradbury) Carli Studnicky, MS, Constraining Deformation Mechanisms of
Fault Damage Zones: A Case Study of the Shallow San Andreas Fault at Elizabeth Lake, Southern California (Dr. Jim Evans)
Geology Club holds a Rock Shop on the Quad
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Through the generosity of our alumni and friends, our department is able to provide meaningful tuition, field camp, and research scholarships to over 20 students every year, and our students and faculty are very grateful. The Summit Initiative is a three-year effort to enhance these goals by initiating and increasing select endowments. More information can be found on our website: https://geo.usu.edu/information/giving-tousu-geology/index. Contact Information: Utah State University Department of Geosciences 4505 Old Main Hill Logan, UT 84322 Office: 435-797-1273 Fax: 435-797-1588 Email: geo@usu.edu Website: geo.usu.edu