As another calendar year comes to a close, we take this opportunity to fill you in on some notable events and reconnect with alumni and friends. The department has had another strongyear. In spite of declining geosciences student enrollments at many institutions across the U.S, our numbers have held steady at about 200 undergraduate majors in five degrees we offer. We also currently have about eighty graduate students. The department’s graduate programs were, once again, ranked in the top ten by U.S. News and World Report, and our research expenditures this past year were near an all-time high. We have much to be thankful for, especially the extraordinary support we receive year-in and year-out from our alumni and friends.
In this newsletter we welcome two new professors, Isabel Fendley and Rachel Housego (p. 16), and a new museum director, Chris Widga (p. 22), we say farewell to Denny Walizer (p. 17), who retired after more than thirty years of service to the department, and we celebrate Don Fisher’s twenty-five-year leadership of the field school (p. 19). Roman DiBiase, the new field school director, is busy restructuring the school to now include both a 2-credit class during spring semester to teach GIS mapping skills and a four-week (4-credit) field experience conducting mapping exercises in Utah, Montana, and Wyoming during the first part of summer. With this new structure, we are striving to make the field school more affordable and accessible to our students without lowering the expectations for field-related knowledge.
I am in my final year as department head, and one project I hope to complete before I step down next June is an updated history of the department. The last published history of the department I am aware of dates from 1988! Much has changed in the department over the past thirty-five years. Emeritus professor Rudy Slingerland has graciously agreed to help compile and edit the document. Thank you, Rudy! If you recall milestones, accomplishments, or events about the Department’s structure and operation worthy of documenting, we would be very appreciative if you could bring them to our attention.
And speaking of milestones, our extended geosciences family in Happy Valley expanded this year by four with several junior faculty welcoming first-borns! Does anyone remember four new geo-babies in one year? It must be a record!
If you visit State College in the coming months, please be sure to drop by. The department offices are now located in the former dean’s suite on the first floor of Deike Building.
Sincerely,
Andrew Nyblade