Alumni
A Message from the Chair
What a year for the Department! As I type, the walls of the north wing are being demolished. The long overdue seismic walls are up and three new geochemistry facilities are finished. Thanks to Susan Cummins Miller's book, the dark hall with scary wire fences that lead the way to the rock prep lab are being replaced by dry wall and good lighting (I brought Susan's book to the meeting with the college and architects and told them that it was a true story!). We will move back into the north wing next January and then they will start on the south wing. We are planning a building ceremony/alumni and friends party for next year and will let you know in September when it will be as we need to see how much they get done this summer.
We are very pleased that Gareth Funning joined our Geophysics faculty this past fall from a post doc at Berkeley. Gareth uses InSAR and GPS to understand the movement of the Earth's surface and test models of continental deformation and faulting. Gareth brings our geophysics faculty up to 6 and further strengthens the field component of the program.
This year we initiated a graduate track in Global Climate and Environmental Change headed up by Martin Kennedy. This program is the teaching arm of our considerable research strength in this area. The program starts with an intensive field course based out of the UC's White Mountain Research Station in Bishop where students are immersed in the first principles of studying and interpreting the actual record of climate change using the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California as its laboratory. Theses range from examining the biotic response, to the California's recent climate history, to mapping moraines and using InSAR to track glacial retreats. The field aspect of this program is possible because of a very generous donation by the Dr. Richard Moscarello Family, a new friend of the Department.
Congratulations to one of our most recent undergraduates, Emma Britton. Emma has been awarded the 2008 Earth Sciences Department Academic Excellence Award and 2008 College of Natural Agricultural Sciences Outstanding Achievement Award.
Research highlights of the year include the highly anticipated publication of Rich Minnich's Book, California's Fading Wildflowers Lost Legacy and Biological Invasions. For more information checkout (http://www.newsroom.ucr.edu/cgibin/display.cgi?id=1869) A number of papers were published in Science and Nature this year by faculty and students. Tim Lyons and his student Clint Scott published a paper in Nature documenting the delay of the evolution of animal life on Earth by nearly two billion years because of a deficiency of Oxygen and the heavy metal molybdenum (http://www.newsroom.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/display.cgi?id=1798). Martin Kennedy and his student Dave Mrofka also recently published a paper in Nature showing that an abrupt release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, about 635 million years ago from ice sheets that then extended to the Earth's low latitudes caused a dramatic shift in climate, triggering a series of events that resulted in global warming and effectively ended the last "snowball" ice age (http://www.newsroom.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/display.cgi?id=1849). I published a paper this year in Science describing a new late Precambrian fossil with a complex ecology including the likely oldest example of animal sexual reproduction. My husband (faculty member Nigel Hughes) was particularly pleased that it was picked up by the British grocery check out rags and that I was a "page 3 girl" of The Sun. (http://www.newsroom.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/display.cgi?id=1796)
In other recent good news, Lyons Post Doc, Silke Severmann, will be joining the faculty at Rutgers University in New Jersey and Droser former Ph.D. student and post doc, Diana Boyer will be joining the faculty at the State University of New York at Oswego. Recent Kennedy Ph.D. graduate Tom Bristow is headed to a Post Doc at Cal Tech and Hughes graduate Douglas John has joined The Western Center for Paleontology.
The Friday noon Barbeque continues to be very popular among our undergraduate majors and students interested in becoming a major. Many thanks to our alumni donors for making this possible. Nigel Hughes and Pete Sadler have initiated a program of volunteer field trips for our lower division classes and for our majors recently featured in the campus Newspaper click here.
Most importantly, thank you to the generous donors this last academic year. As you know, with gas prices going up and heavy budget cuts across the UC system, in particular field trips, an integral part of the undergrad and grad experience in our department are especially difficult to keep going. Your generous support has allowed us to continue our tradition of teaching our students directly in the field. On behalf of our students and faculty, thank you so very much to Arthur Ballard, Peter Kolesare Jr., Marilyn Ellis, Ty Schuiling, Steven Zappe, Robert Hunter, Jeffrey Knott, David Christiansen, Steven Sanford, David Rhys, James Warnke, Lowell Dingus, Francis Fujioka, Fred Miller, Jeffrey Sternfeld, Marc Loiselle, Mary K. Holkenbrink, Christopher Guerre, David F. Langenkamp, Gene Humphreys, Michael Prange, Lee Allison, and Don Covington Robert Sydnor, Thomas Spittler, Paul Sternburg & Karen Sternburg. A special Thank you for your particularly generous donations to our Hard Rock Sam Members Lucy Edwards, Gary McGavin, Dave Hadley, Richard Moscarello, Dave Johnson, William Powell, and Robert Cluff. Thank you also to our Geophysics alumni who recently brought the Shawn Biehler fund over the goal of $100,000.00 Thanks for being a part of the UCR Earth Sciences Family. We really enjoy hearing from you. Please send any news to Jennifer Reising jreising@ucr.edu so that we can post it on our web site. We will be in touch next fall about the upcoming building re-opening party. We plan to give you plenty of time to insure that you can plan around it.
Cheers, Mary Droser, Chair.
Hard Rock Sam Members
We would like to personally thank our four new Hard Rock Sam Members: Gerry Weber, John Dunham, Lucy Edwards, Gary McGavin, Dave Hadley, Richard Moscarello, Dave Johnson, William G. Powell and Robert Cluff for their generous contribution to the Earth Science "Fund for Excellence".
Come check out what other UCR Earth Sciences Alumni are up to...
Alumni Newsletter
Alumni Newsletter Fall 06
Alumni Newsletter Spring 07
Alumni Newsletter Fall 08
We want to know what you have been up to? A new job, adventure, expedition, a new discovery or if you just want to keep in touch with your class please email us at jreising@ucr.edu
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