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Augustana
College Alumni Home Page
Greetings from the Rock Island Rock Docs! It's been 2½ years since our last update. With the arrivals of a new College President and Dean, major changes are in the wind; although these changes have given rise to an atmosphere of high pressure in some areas of the campus, our department is poised to take advantage of the turbulence and make course adjustments. Senior Research. One of the most profound proposals in the College's new strategic plan is to require all Augustana students to complete some kind of senior capstone experience. We believe that a research experience is of inestimable benefit for those students willing to apply themselves, but because of time constraints (ours and our students) we've only encouraged, not required, such efforts in the past. In order for this plan to work for our small department, something has to give – we cannot ask our students simply to add 2-3 additional courses to their 15 course major (10 geology plus other chemistry, math, physics, & geography courses). With the help of our alumni advisory council, we will develop a new, more flexible geology curriculum which incorporates a required series of directed research courses. Along with the written thesis, an oral presentation at Udden Club and a poster presentation at the regional GSA meeting will be expected.
China. A Freeman Foundation “Building Bridges” grant to the College allowed a dozen Augie professors to travel through China for a month in 2002. In June of 2004 Mike Wolf and five other profs went back for another month, this time each taking 5 students. Each geology student studied some aspect of China 's use and environmental impact of various energy resources. The +38-person entourage, including geology students (left to right) Mike Sheehan, Dan Jones, Susan Kilgore, Beth McAdam, and Mike Ponsetto, visited Hong Kong, the karst mountains of Guilin (photo above), Wuhan, the three gorges dam project near Yichang, the Sichuan panda preserve near Chengdu, the terra cotta soldiers of Xi'an, Beijing, and the Great Wall near Chengde. A trip to remember for a life-time.
Rocky Mountains. For the fourth year in a row, Jeff Strasser and Mike Wolf ran the August field course to South Dakota and Wyoming for in-coming first-year students. Locations for study include the Badlands , the Black Hills , Devil's Tower, the Big Horn Mtns., the Absaroka Mtns. near Cody, and the Owl Creek Mtns. This year we had 17 students! Bill Hammer's “Mammal Fossils of the Badlands” May field course remains a popular choice for upper-level majors and non-majors.
Hawai'i. With generous financial support from various alumni, but especially John and Mary Lucken ('62) and the family of Rudy Edmund, the department was able to heavily subsidize a spring break trip to Hawai'i this year! Mike Wolf, Eric S. Anderson ('99) and twelve senior and junior geology majors spent an incredible week poking at liquid hot lava, body surfing up onto an olivine green sand beach, hiking through lava tubes and across calderas, and trudging up the snowy slopes to the peak of Mauna Kea. What a lead-in to spring term's Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology course!
Erwin’s efforts were financially supported by the Geology dept. and alumni, especially Cynthia Roseman Wright and her husband Ray. The department is filling orders for the $20 book/DVD set, so contact us if you’d like a copy (sorry, but the cost cannot be considered a tax-deductible contribution, as it only partially offsets the expense of printing, binding, and shipping).
Memories of Meteorites. Pre-1965 alumni … please let us know if you worked with Doc Fryxell on the meteorite collection and are willing to test your memory by acting as a resource for various questions that come up from time to time about the samples. If so, please make a note on the return alumni info. sheet. Memorial. We regret to inform you of the untimely passing of Myra Funkhouser-Marolf ('82). A memorial scholarship has been set up in her name; please contact Augustana's Development Office for further details. Faculty Happenings. Bill continues to teach “Great Scientific Controversies” in the first-year honors Logos program. His research soars onward; he's determined that the dinosaur collected during the '03 season is a true sauropod (one of the oldest ever found), though prep. work is ongoing. Grants keep rolling in, and yet another field season has been planned, in part during last spring's sabbatical. With help from Augie student Nate Smith ('02) and Phil Currie, the phylogenetic position of Cryolophosaurus has been worked out. Jeff continues to direct student research and, when time permits, to study local glacial deposits. After eight consecutive years, the Matanuska Glacier ( Alaska ) REU program that he initiated has now folded, leaving an empty camp with lots of supplies labeled “Augustana College”! Mike begins his fourth year as department chair. In addition to those and additional curator duties, he designed a new course for the first-year Liberal Studies program focused on the “Geology of Myths and Legends.” Currently he is attempting to get a newly acquired used XRF (x-ray fluorescence spectrometer) up and running (a donation from a BP subsidiary). Noted Recent Alumni Accomplishments. We congratulate two of our alumni working on their graduate degrees. Anders E. Carlson (‘00), now at Oregon State University , received the 2004 J. Hoover Mackin Award from GSA's Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division for “A Holocene chronology of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, North America.” Veronica E. McCann (‘01), now at Ohio State University , received a 2005 Outstanding Student Paper Award from AGU's Volcanology, Geochemistry, and Petrology Section for “Olivine-Melt Equilibrium and the Oxygen Fugacities of Lavas from Hawai'i.” Past Student Research Projects (1997-2005) Sincerely, Michael Wolf (Chair),
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