Dr. and Mrs. Richard B. Alley

Mr. Lance C. Anderson

Mr. Charles E. Angerman

Mr. and Mrs. Joseph W. Berg

Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey L. Bologa

Mr. and Mrs. Claude E. Bolze

Mr. and Mrs. William A. Bragonier

Dr. Timothy Bralower

Ms. Karen Rasmussen Campbell

Mr. and Mrs. David L. Cannon

Mr. Robert M. Cohen and Ms. Karen L. Stierman

Mr. and Mrs. Bruce G. Crocker

Mr. and Mrs. Randall T. Cygan

Dr. W. Brian Dade

Dr. John M. Darcy, II

Dr. and Mrs. Timothy M. Demko

Mr. and Mrs. John N. Dougherty

Mr. James A. Doutt

Dr. and Mrs. Richard Engelder

James A. Ewart Jr.

Dr. Martin B. Farley

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Fausey

Dr. Kevin P. Furlong 

Miss Vanessa L. Gallagher

Ms. Judith Gray

Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Grenot Jr.

Dr. Albert L. Guber

Ms. Amy K. Leon Guerrero

Dr. Weixing Guo

Dr. and Mrs. John W. Hess

Dr. Roberta M. Hotinski

Dr. Christopher H. House

Dr. and Mrs. David W. Houseknecht

Mr. and Mrs. Stephen S. Howe

Dr. Jacqueline Huntoon

Mr. and Mrs. Solomon Jarmell

Mrs. Janet C. Kappmeyer and Mr. Andrew M. Isaacs

Dr. and Mrs. John J. Kelley

Mr. Lawrence G. Kodosky

Dr. Leonard F. Konikow

Mr. Andrew B. Kovalcik

Mr. and Mrs. Garry M. Kramchak

Dr. and Mrs. Laurence H. Lattman

Dr. Earle S. Lenker

Mr. and Mrs. Michael G. Loudin

Mr. Dennis J. Maiorino

Mr. and Mrs. Jon J. Major

Dr. Chris Marone

Dr. Roger K. McLimans

Mr. James L. McNett

Mr. and Mrs. Timothy B. Mullen

Dr. Ralph H. Nafziger

Ms. Nancy L. Niemann

Dr. and Mrs. Hiroshi Ohmoto

Mr. Daniel W. Ombalski

Dr. and Mrs. Allison R. Palmer

Dr. Robert J. Pottorf

Dr. and Mrs. Lawrence D. Ramspott

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas K. Reeves, Jr.

Mrs. Linda Turnley Reif

Dr. Anthony L. Riccardi

Drs. John H. Rowland and Virginia Vincenti

Mr. David C. Rowley

Dr. Robert and Mrs. Marlene Ryder

Dr. and Mrs. Ira D. Sasowsky

Mr. Albert P. Savioz

Drs. Derek and Audrey Sawyer

Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Schoonen

Dr. and Mrs. Stephen O. Sears

Mr. and Mrs. Irvin C. Shambaugh, Jr.

Mr. Michael C. Sukop

Mrs. Emily E. Swanson

Mr. and Ms. Keith R. Sweitzer

Mr. and Mrs. Carl H. Taylor

Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth H. Turner

Mr. Stephen J. Urbanik

Dr. and Mrs. John W. Washington

Mr. John M. Weaver

Dr. Matthew L. Werner, III

Dr. and Mrs. William E. Wertz

Dr. Timothy S. White

Mr. Douglas J. Woodring

Note: This list is the compilation of contributiins received between July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2019.

Energetic barely begins to describe geosciences alumna Ashlee Dere.

An associate professor of geology at the University of Nebraska Omaha (UNO), Dere continues to build an impressive research profile while balancing her teaching and mentoring duties, and giving presentations and seminars across the globe.

Dere graduated from Penn State with a master’s degree in soil science in 2009 and a Ph.D. in geosciences in 2014. She joined the faculty at UNO after graduation and has since presented her research in places as far away as Paris, France, and Yokohama, Japan.

Dere’s research focuses on the drivers of weathering and soil formation and how intensive agricultural land use influences soil structure and function within the critical zone, which extends from the bedrock to the upper extent of the vegetation. She also is an investigator with the National Science Foundation-funded Critical Zone Observatory (CZO) program, established to investigate biogeochemical processes occurring at Earth’s surface.

“I really love working with soils and being out in the field digging soil pits and discovering the information that is within them,” she said. “Through this research, we can learn how these features formed, what they mean for ecosystems, and how they impact the evolution of the landscapes.”.

Dere encourages her undergraduate students to get involved in her soil research, teaching them how to collect water samples and soil cores. She has taken students to field sites near the Omaha campus, in the Appalachian region, and as far away as Puerto Rico, Alaska, and Australia.

“I really like working with students,” Dere said. “Being able to bring them out into the field and show them this excitement has been a really fun part of this job.”

She first became interested in soils as an undergraduate student at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo after participating in a soil judging program. The program gives students field experience analyzing, describing, and interpreting soil profiles. She found the experience so rewarding that she started a soil judging team at UNO.

“The university is very much an urban campus,” she said. “It’s been really fun having students take a chance on something that they aren’t familiar with, and seeing them come out after just one week with skills that they can use moving forward in their careers.”
Dere credits the training and mentoring she received at Penn State for helping in her early career. She named Susan Brantley, Distinguished Professor of Geosciences and director of the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (EESI), and Tim White, research professor in EESI, as important mentors. She still stays in touch with both researchers. This summer, Dere and White conducted field work in Alaska and led a critical zone science field school in northern Italy. She still contacts Brantley for career advice.
“I’m so grateful to have this continued guidance,” Dere said. “Tim and Sue are so giving of their time and energy.” 

UNO has recognized her efforts. This spring, the university granted Dere tenure, allowing her to complete the process a year early. She also received the Alumni Outstanding Teaching Award.

Dere has no plans to slow down anytime soon. “Now we have connections with people of different specialties all over the world,” she said of the field school in Italy. “We’re a bit stronger moving forward and can do more work.”

Before coming to Penn State, Dere earned an undergraduate degree in earth sciences at Cal Poly and spent a year abroad studying French at the Université Paul Cézanne Aix-Marseille III in France. Outside the classroom, she enjoys running, traveling, and playing bass flute in a community flute choir.

Randy Cygan is a Centennial Fellow of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and he served as a member of the department’s advisory board from 2012 to 2019. He has been a valued alumni mentor to our undergraduate students seeking career guidance. Cygan received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry with a minor in geology in 1977 from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). He first caught the geology bug during his high school years by traveling with family and friends throughout the Midwest, but it grew into a serious avocation during a lab assistantship with Gus Koster van Groos at UIC. Cygan’s exposure to the high-pressure synthesis of minerals led him to graduate studies at the world’s center for experimental petrology. At Penn State he earned his master’s degree in 1980 followed by a doctorate in 1983, both in geochemistry and mineralogy.

While working on high-temperature crystal zoning profiles in metapelites, he discovered the experimental and intellectual resources offered by collaborations with faculty in the Materials Research Laboratory. He credits professors like Carlo Pantano, Rustum Roy, and Will White with teaching him that the interface between geochemistry and materials science offers a wealth of exploration opportunities.

“The materials connection played off how Penn State geochemistry evolved in the 1950s and 60s, and I wanted to keep that bridge going,” Cygan said. “It really directed me to where I wanted to go in my professional career.”

As a graduate student, Cygan worked on problems that were highly unconventional at the time. However, thanks to efforts like his, they are now part of the mineralogical canon. He developed an impedance spectroscopy system to measure the dielectric response of forsterite at high temperatures and he also was an early user of the ion microprobe, which enabled him to measure trace element profiles with high spatial resolution in minerals that have very slow cation diffusion rates, such as garnet.

Cygan joined the Geochemistry Department at Sandia National Laboratories in 1983, where he worked for thirty-two years, interrupted by a two-year tenure on the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1987-88. Cygan is probably best known for the sophistication of his computational simulations of mineral structures and reaction interfaces (see illustration). His wide-ranging publications include investigations of mineral equilibria, chemical kinetics, surface chemistry of minerals, adsorption and dissolution of minerals, shock metamorphism, structure and transport properties of battery materials, and molecular modeling of minerals and geochemical processes. Cygan has published extensively in various geological, chemical, and materials science journals and received numerous honors. In addition to many awards for excellence received from Sandia, he is an Honorary Distinguished Alumnus of the Penn State Materials Research Laboratory, a Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America, and in 2010 he received the Brindley Lecture Award from the Clay Minerals Society.

Cygan is married to Donna Skeels and has two adult daughters, Kate and Nora. Although he recently “retired” from Sandia, he continues to publish papers, attend conferences, and devote time as a mentor to graduate students and research scientists. He holds an adjunct position at Texas A&M University and serves on many university and government advisory boards and committees. In his free time, he enjoys bicycling with friends, hiking in the mountains near his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and traveling with Donna, especially to visit their daughters in Chicago and Denver. He has great memories of Penn State, and he is especially proud to have co-founded in 1980 the Geohabs team playing in the Nittany Hockey League.

As Department Head Andy Nyblade observes, “Randy’s contributions to the department through his service on the Alumni Advisory Board are gratefully appreciated. It is amazing that Randy has made time to serve and advise the department while he was engaged in such a highly-productive research career. We hope that despite cycling off the advisory board, he continues to offer his creative insights for the department’s future.”

My path into geoscience was fairly unintentional. Through high school  extracurricular activities, I was introduced to topics such as hydrogeology, seismology, paleontology, and glaciology. Although I was intrigued by these studies, I never gave them much consideration for my future—until it came time to apply to college. Scrolling through the endless list of possible majors, there were quite a few that caught my eye. None stuck out quite like the geosciences. I decided to give the geosciences major a try, and after my first year it was clear to me that this was the right major for me.

Each new professor and class at Penn State has opened my eyes to a different aspect of the field, and my passion has only grown. Over time, my interest has narrowed to environmental geosciences, and I have also become interested in sustainability.

This past fall, I took part in Penn State’s Study Away Pittsburgh program, now renamed to City Semester Pittsburgh. This program matches students with community partners and allows the students to work as interns on sustainability projects in Pittsburgh. I was partnered with the Allegheny County Conservation District, working with their urban soils program. This internship consisted of collecting and testing urban soils, analyzing for lead and arsenic contamination—a serious issue in Pittsburgh. Through the results of soil testing, the organization determines whether lots are safe for human interaction. I was shocked by the number of lots that tested unsafe for humans. Most land parcels measured lead concentrations over the acceptable limit of 400 parts per million, with some measuring more than 1,000 parts per million. This experience of working with community members in different neighborhoods of Pittsburgh greatly influenced my interests and led me to add a minor in sustainability. 

I am incredibly grateful to Penn State for my experience during the first three years of my college experience. The professors have done an amazing job of developing my knowledge throughout several different areas of the geosciences. Additionally, the faculty in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences have been fantastic in guiding me toward my interests and keeping me on the right track. The opportunities that I have been presented with over the years, have been unforgettable, and hopefully my final year of undergraduate studies will be even better.

My earliest memory of geology is looking through my father’s telescope at the full    moon on a crisp autumn night. The town we lived in at the time had little light pollution, and it afforded a wonderfully unobscured view of the night sky. Stepping on my tiptoes to gaze through the eyepiece, transported a world many thousands of miles away to directly in front of me. I observed the deep gouges and craters carved on the lunar surface from innumerable debris impacts. Canyons snaked across the moon in seemingly random patterns. Ancient mountains stood as lonely sentinels guarding the secrets of their formation from all but the most curious eyes. After that night, my imagination was piqued, and I would do anything in my power to find out more about the world around me through science.

I soon found out that geology was the perfect fit for an aspiring scientist. Spurred on by several influential geoscientists in my high school and undergraduate career, I realized I wanted to study at the graduate level how rocks change and deform over
time. I brought my childhood fascination with me as I began to apply my love of science to geologic questions. My journey led me to study fracture propagation in Penn State’s Rock and Sediment Mechanics Laboratory with Chris Marone, professor of geosciences. My graduate research involved performing hydraulic fracturing experiments at the laboratory scale coupled with ultrasonic monitoring techniques. By sending elastic waves across a fracture as it grows, new insights into how open or closed the interface is can be determined. Fracture behavior is still a subject of intense research for industry applications, and I hope to one day apply the knowledge of geophysics I’ve developed to a career in industry and teaching.

The coursework I engaged in at Penn State also helped me become a stronger young professional. Enrolling in the Imperial
Barrel Award competition, led by Liz Hajek, associate professor of geosciences, who served as our team’s adviser, gave me a
detailed look at how critical a geoscientist’s input is to any oil and gas exploration effort. My research and classwork at Penn
State allowed me to develop quantitative research skills, such as computer programming and critical thinking. Looking back, I
couldn’t have developed these skills as fully anywhere else.

Having been born and raised in a volcanic archipelago, the Canary Islands, I have always been fascinated by the geological processes that operate on Earth, the mechanisms that drive them, and their impacts on society. I further developed my passion for volcano geophysics during a visit to Iceland when I was 16, where I had the chance to meet a Ph.D. student who was using GPS data for volcano monitoring. Ever since, I have been drawn to research involving the study of volcanic hazards through geophysical methods.

I completed my undergraduate and master’s degrees in Earth sciences at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Throughout those four years, I was able to complement my studies with a series of summer internships that helped narrow my research interests. I participated in a geochemical campaign after the 2011 volcanic eruption on El Hierro and a one-month offshore seismic data acquisition campaign to image the subsurface beneath Mount Etna, Sicily to obtain data for tomographic models. I also participated in a Karst Scene Investigation project in Russia involving seismic, radiologic, gravitational, magnetic, and electric surveys. For my master’s thesis, I chose to follow the route of deep Earth seismology, focusing on the topography of the core mantle boundary that would provide me with valuable computing skills. However, I knew I would find it most rewarding to work on science that has direct societal impacts, and having discovered the applications of radar satellite data for monitoring ground surface deformation through my tutor’s research, I chose to pursue my Ph.D. with Dr. Christelle Wauthier at Penn State.

My Ph.D. research focuses on flank instability processes at Pacaya volcano in Guatemala, where there is evidence for past flank
collapse. My passion for this research is driven by the opportunity to contribute scientific knowledge to hazard assessment that can then be incorporated into risk mitigation. At Pacaya, we rely largely on satellite data to study past flank instability events, which makes my research topic equally challenging and exciting. My main focus is unravelling the deformation behavior of the volcano over time, identifying temporal links with eruptions and other volcanic signals, as well as investigating potential sources of the observed deformation through numerical modeling. In particular, I aim to determine whether there exists a detachment fault within the volcanic edifice, which might facilitate slip and pose a greater threat of flank collapse.

Through taking courses both in the Departments of Geosciences and Mechanical Engineering, the graduate program at Penn State has enabled me to further my understanding of topics relevant to my Ph.D. research. Additionally, I enjoy the opportunity to share my knowledge with younger students as their teaching assistant. My long-term goal is to pursue an academic career in volcano geodesy or become part of a geoscience research institution or volcano observatory so that I can continue to apply my knowledge to solve problems related to natural hazards and risk mitigation.

The caravan then passed through Yellowstone National Park and spent a week based in Teton Village, where students mapped Quaternary geology and fault scarps along the Teton mountain front with DiBiase. Students combined a field investigation of the landforms characteristic of glaciated landscapes using satellite imagery and lidar-derived topographic data to establish the geologic history that gave rise to the geomorphology.

Fisher then took students to east-central Idaho where they camped in the metamorphic core complex of the Pioneer Mountains and mapped faults, unconformities, and volcanic deposits to craft arguments for the relative timing for the area’s deposition, folding and faulting, erosion, and volcanism.

For the final two exercises, the group traveled to Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah. As in past years, the students completed a map and cross section of the overthrust belt to estimate the shortening and fault slip due to thrust faulting and stratigraphic repetition. Snow prevented mapping in the Albion Basin, so Smye and Furlong led the last exercise in a new area near Brighton.

Students identified and located metamorphic isograds in the field that are used to estimate peak temperature changes with distance from the Alta Stock. Thermal models are then used to place constraints on the dimensions of the pluton and the crustal conditions during cooling.

Q&A with Sarah Ivory, assistant professor

What attracted you the field? I actually never imagined being a scientist when I was a kid. My first career aspiration was to be a poet. I spent most of my teenage years wandering around my town in northern Wisconsin or writing under a big tree by the Chippewa River. At that point in my life, I appreciated the beauty of plants but took it for granted that they had names and were all different. I ended up being attracted to the field when a desire to be more descriptive of landscapes led me to try and figure out what the plants I was writing about were called. That was a rabbit hole that I still haven’t come out of.

What is your educational background? I earned my bachelor’s degree from a small university in my hometown, the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. I actually got a B.S. in botany and French and worked in France in a research lab for a while after graduating. I

then earned my Ph.D. in geosciences at the University of Arizona. I started graduate school having never taken a geology course. There was a lot of catch-up, but my background ended up being a great asset, because geology and biology are so tightly linked.

What are your research interests? I am interested in better understanding how vegetation—individual plants and communities—respond to changes in climate throughout the Quaternary. Also, I am interested in how humans have altered the environment through time and how the environment has shaped humanity. In order to do this, I use plant fossils, especially pollen from flowers to reconstruct ancient vegetation.

Why did you choose Penn State? Penn State is such a great place to be a young scientist. You get to work alongside some of the smartest people in the world, and you get the sense that everyone genuinely wants you to be successful. Also coming from a background that is sort of between disciplines, Penn State really fosters collaboration and relationship-building across colleges and the University itself. I really appreciate that mentality.

Jesse Reimink, assistant professor

Originally from the great state of Michigan, I grew up as the eldest son of two public school teachers, who instilled in me a deep appreciation for academic, athletic, and educational pursuits. For my undergraduate studies, I attended Hope College, a small liberal arts college, where I majored in geology and played basketball, a sport that remains a major part of my life. After graduating, I started in an M.Sc. program at the University of Alberta, focused on mapping and geochemistry within the Acasta Gneiss Complex, Northwest Territories, Canada, which evolved into a Ph.D. project that I completed in 2015.

My father was a high school biology teacher, who worked on research programs involving schistosome parasites in lakes in northern Michigan. I was raised around science and the outdoors to the extent that I thought to pursue biology like my father. However, in ninth grade I took the required Earth science course, taught by Chris Bolhuis, an incredibly dynamic educator who won the 2013 Earth Science Teacher of the Year award from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. This course, combined with his geology course that I took in eleventh grade, set me down the path toward Earth science as a profession.

I became interested in geochemistry during my undergraduate studies when I worked as a research assistant for two summers studying copper-mineralizing fluids in the Midcontinent Rift and mapping high-grade gneiss terrane in the Sveconorwegian orogeny exposed in Sweden. This translated nicely to my work in the Northwest Territories that used mapping and geochemistry to evaluate the origins of continental crust in deep time.

Before coming to Penn State, I was a postdoctoral fellow for three years at the Carnegie Institution for Science in their Department of Terrestrial Magnetism., where I continued to work on early crust formation and various problems related to the early Earth.

Recently, I have started to work on a technique-development project that, if successful, will improve mass spectrometry techniques used by a wide variety of analyses in the fields of geochemistry, geochronology, and nuclear forensics.

I am incredibly honored and excited to be a part of the Penn State’s Department of Geosciences and remain sufficiently intimidated and motivated by the prospect of joining such a prestigious program. I plan to continue to work on early Earth geochemistry problems and hope to assist in bringing new analytical facilities to the department while contributing to the broader goal of geosciences education.

Russell Graham, who oversaw the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences’ EMS Museum and Art Gallery for the past fifteen years, retired on May 31. He was succeeded by Jane Cook, former chief scientist at the Corning Museum of Glass.

Anyone who’s perused one of the museum’s many rotating exhibits—The Lure of the Mine and The Bearded Lady Project come to mind—know of Graham’s impact. It’s the same for any eager middle-schooler who’s ever created tornadoes with their fingertips or stomped their feet near an accelerometer to force mini earthquakes.

Fewer know about Graham’s decades of experience gathering, preparing, and maintaining exhibits for the Smithsonian Institution, the Illinois State Museum, and Denver Museum of Nature & Science, before coming to Penn State to oversee the transformation to a modern, professional museum.

Or of his most acclaimed discovery, finding stone tools used by the Clovis culture—a prehistoric Paleo-American culture and one of the first people to live in North America—during a dig in Missouri, which to date is the only evidence that the group hunted forest-dwelling mastodons. The site of the excavation has since been transformed into the Mastodon State Historic Site and State Park.

“I’ve been working for forty-two years, and it’s the diversity and fun that keeps me going,” Graham said. “I’ve had the opportunity to do scientific research and I love discovering new things. You get to interact with the public so you’re not just sitting in your office or laboratory. You’re telling people about the work you do and trying to get them turned on to research and science. From your research, you create exhibits, which brings out your creative side.”

Modernizing the museum

Through grants and elbow grease, Graham oversaw the inventory, safe storage, and restorations of much of the college’s vast collection. The museum is home to more than 18,000 geological specimens, thousands of mining safety and other extraction industry artifacts, and numerous paintings that began with artwork from former EMS Dean Edward Steidle’s personal collection.

Graham said it was reviewing these paintings in preparation for the book, The Wonders of Work and Labor, published with help from Julianne Snider, the museum’s assistant director of exhibitions and collections, that made him realize how unique and special the collection was. So did creating a digital inventory of the collection, where his staff examined each specimen piece by piece.

Parts of the museum’s collections are on display across the world, and Graham said a completed digital archive will only expand those opportunities.

Graham said restorations to the Steidle Art Collection—made possible through gifts from the Steidle family—unearthed new details in the works. The inventory process also exposed him to some of the more peculiar items in the collection. For example, the museum houses specimens of a material called trinitite, which was created during above-ground nuclear bomb testing in the United States just after World War II. It also owns one of the first furnaces used to conduct experiments for understanding volcanism. In it, rocks were heated to magma and cooled; then the new formations were analyzed.

The collections, once housed piecemeal throughout the campus, are now safely stored in a climate-controlled building near the University Park Airport.

Life after museums

Graham said there’s much he’ll miss about museums. He’ll miss developing eye-catching and accessible exhibits.

But retirement will free up more time to continue research and writing. 

“I’ll be staying involved at a much more leisurely pace while working on the backburner projects that I’ve always wanted to do.” Graham said. “I’ve really enjoyed my job and engaging with students and the public. It’s been fantastic. I wouldn’t have stayed in it as long if I didn’t love it.”