Faculty and Staff

Lori Bettison–Varga

Associate Professor of Geology

(B.A. University of California at Santa Barbara, 1983; M.S., Ph.D. University of California at Davis, 1986, 1991; Wooster since 1992). In the Fall of 2003, Lori taught First Year Seminar and in the Spring of 2004 Oceanography. Lori was one of four faculty who taught in the First Year Learning and Living pilot project, in which first-year students live with their FYS colleagues in an on-campus house.

Lori continued in her position as Faculty Grants Associate during the 2003-04 academic year. While continuing her work with faculty members interested in pursuing outside funding, Lori also worked on several institutional grants. In particular, her work on the College’s Howard Hughes Medical Institute Undergraduate Science Education proposal was greeted with the first successful grant in the last three rounds of competition. The last HHMI grant was received in 1988. Part of this grant involves establishing a science center to support local teachers in science education, a worthwhile endeavor for all in the college community!

Lori was a co-author on a manuscript entitled “Miocene extension and extensional folding in an anticlinal segment of the Black Mountains accommodation zone, Colorado River extensional corridor, southwestern United States” which appeared in Tectonics in 2004 (see front cover illustration).

Additionally, she is co-principal investigator with Robert Varga (principal investigator) on a $76,877 grant from the National Science Foundation Research at Undergraduate Institutions entitled “Paleomagnetic, Geochemical and Age Discrimination of ~18-19 Ma Tuffs of the Colorado River Extensional Corridor.” With this funding, her work on the petrogenesis of volcanics in the Grasshopper Junction region of Arizona will continue.

Lori was invited to the NSF’s Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement, Invention and Impact symposium in April. She continued her involvement with the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR), completing her term as Chair of the Geosciences Division. She was elected Secretary of the organization at the June 2004 meeting in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. She was one of the program planners for that biennial conference and was a presenter at three workshops during the meeting.

Lori was also actively involved in a variety of College committees, including the Educational Policy Committee (EPC), the Women’s Studies Curriculum Committee, and the Assessment Committee. v

Brennan T. Jordan

Visiting Professor of Geology

(B.A. Hofstra University, 1990; M.S. Idaho State University, 1994; Ph.D. Oregon State, 2002; Wooster since 2003). Brennan taught Mineralogy and Geology of Natural Hazards in the Fall Semester, and Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology and Geology of Natural Hazards in the Spring of 2004.

Brennan had one Senior Independent Study student in his first year at Wooster. Deanne Rider (‘04) was a participant in the Keck Iceland 2003 project that Brennan directed. The project was conducted in the Skagi area in north-central Iceland, focusing on various aspects of an abandoned rift, and involved nine students and additional faculty members John Winter (Whitman College) and Rick Hazlett (Pomona College). Deanne studied a thick volcaniclastic sequence exposed in the mountain Vididalsfjall. Deanne presented the results of her study at the joint meeting of the Cordilleran and Rocky Mountain Sections of the Geological Society of America in Boise, Idaho, in May.

Brennan led a follow-up to the 2003 Iceland Keck project in the summer of 2004. He was joined by Keegan Schmidt (Lewis-Clark State College) and seven students in a project that expanded on the studies in north-central Iceland in 2003 and explored new territory in the remote Westfords of northwestern Iceland. Charlene Adzima (‘05) was one of the participants in this project; she focused her fieldwork on a coarsely porphyritic andesite (unusual in Iceland) exposed in the mountain Langadalsfjall in north-central Iceland. The group collected a large number of samples and all participants will have a busy year ahead with petrography, chemical analysis, and Ar/Ar geochronology.

In addition to supervising Charlene, Brennan will be supervising the Senior Independent Study research of Josh Michaels (‘05) and Amanda Trenton (‘05), both of whom participated in a Keck project in Canyonlands National Park, Utah. This exciting project was a shallow geophysical survey of a Quaternary graben that formed in response to surficial, rather than tectonic, processes.

The 2003-2004 academic year was a productive one for Brennan in terms of research and publication. He ushered two manuscripts to acceptance that are now in press in the Journal of Geophysical Research and a Geological Society of America Special Paper, Plates, Plumes, and Paradigms. Brennan made professional presentations at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Seattle in November and the joint meeting of the Cordilleran and Rocky Mountain Sections of the Geological Society of America in Boise. Brennan also gave a colloquium lecture at Bowling Green State University in February and gave research lectures in several venues at Wooster.

During the Fall of 2004 Brennan will be teaching Mineralogy and Geology of Natural Hazards; in Spring 2005 he will teach Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology and Geology of Natural Hazards.

Robert J. Varga

Associate Professor

Shoolroy Chair of Natural Resources

(B.S., M.S., Arizona, 1974, 1976; Ph.D. University of California at Davis, 1980; Wooster since 1992). Last Spring I taught Processes & Concepts of Geology and a seminar on Tectonics. I am on leave for the 2004-2005 academic year.

The past year has been a busy and rewarding one for our department and me. I was extremely excited to work with Josh Michaels (‘05) on construction of a "Geowall" to be used for teaching throughout our department. The Geowall allows use of 3D imaging technology similar to that employed in IMAX theaters. The real advantage to teaching is that all students in a classroom can easily see the same images in 3D simultaneously (if you recall looking through those darned stereoscopes in lab, you can imagine the advantage!). Josh and I introduced the Geowall in Geology 200 in the Spring to raves and we look forward to developing its use in courses across the curriculum. The Geowall was made possible by a generous grant to me through the College's Hewlett-Mellon fund.

I worked with two I.S. students this past year. Steve Burton (‘04) and Marc Bryson (‘04) pursued the relative timing of structural and magmatic events in one of the regional "flexure" zones of Iceland using paleomagnetic cores collected by us the previous summer. Much of their Fall was devoted to working on demagnetization experiments in our laboratory in Scovel Hall while Marc also traveled to the University of Pittsburgh to measure anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility on lava flows and dikes from the flexure. Two additional students, Andy Horst (‘07) and Kaylin Siegner (‘07) continued our work on the paleomagnetism of our Iceland cores this summer under the College's Sophomore Research Program. In eight weeks, Kaylin and Andy did an incredible amount of work and essentially completed the paleomagnetic experiments on our Icelandic cores.

One of the really positive aspects of the I.S. program at The College of Wooster is the involvement of students directly into the faculty research projects, which adds immensely to the excitement and relevance to all involved. The work of my students on Icelandic rocks fits in nicely to our ongoing efforts to understand the tectonics of mid-ocean spreading centers. Their paleomagnetic results were critical to the success of a recent proposal by me and Jeff Karson of Duke University to continue the Iceland project for another three years. The proposal, entitled "Iceland Flexure Zones: Analogs for Mid-Ocean Ridge Spreading Centers" ($109,463 to Wooster), was funded by the Marine Geology and Geophysics panel of the National Science Foundation and will provide funding for students to conduct field research, perform lab experiments, and to attend meetings during the course of the grant.

Along with my colleague, Lori Bettison-Varga, we were also fortunate to receive funding this past year for our work on the extensional tectonics of the Basin & Range. Our grant, "Paleomagnetic, Geochemical and Age Discrimination of ~18-19 Ma Tuffs of the Colorado River Extensional Corridor" ($76,877) was funded by the Tectonics panel of the National Science Foundation. These funds will support student research for the next three years to decipher the stratigraphic complexities of important volcanic units in the region roughly encompassing Kingman, Arizona; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Barstow, California.

After a year delay, my oceanographic cruise to the Pito Deep area off Easter Island is (apparently) going to happen January through March 2005. During this cruise we will deploy a nested array of vehicles to explore a natural cross section of crust created at the East Pacific Rise. During the cruise we will also be using the deep submersible Alvin to observe and measure structures directly related to creation of crust at a mid-ocean spreading center and to collect oriented rock samples. Again, my colleague on this project is Jeff Karson of Duke University and our grant for this project will support a variety of student projects by Wooster students in the three years subsequent to the cruise.

Since our last report I have attended the Geological Society of America meeting in Seattle where I presented a poster on some of my work on the structure of the East Pacific Rise at 2°N. I also published three papers; "Paleomagnetic constraints on deformation models for uppermost oceanic crust exposed at the Hess Deep Rift: Implications for axial processes at the East Pacific Rise" that appeared in Journal of Geophysical Research, "Miocene extension and extensional folding in an anticlinal segment of the Black Mountains accommodation zone, Colorado River extensional corridor, southwestern United States", published in Tectonics, and "The sheeted dike complex of the Troodos ophiolite and its role in understanding mid-ocean ridge processes" that appeared in the edited book Ophiolite Concept and the Evolution of Geological Though published by the Geological Society of America. v

Gregory C. Wiles

Assistant Professor of Geology

(B.A. Beloit, 1984; M.S. SUNY Binghamton, 1987, Ph.D. University at Buffalo, 1992; Wooster since 1998). Greg taught Environmental Geology and First Year Seminar in the Fall of 2003, and Geomorphology, Environmental Geology in the Spring semester of 2004.

During the Fall of 2003, Greg advised two Senior Independent Study students. Matthew Beckwith-Laube (‘04) worked on a project in Alaska focusing on extending the tree-ring chronology associated with the great tidewater Columbia Glacier. Together with Greg and others, Matt presented results of this work at the fall GSA meeting in Seattle and at the Arctic Workshop in Boulder. Greg presented additional work at GSA with Kristina Brady (‘03) on advances of large tidewater glaciers during the Medieval Warm Period. The Alaska work is funded by the NSF and is a collaborative project with Parker Calkin (UC-Boulder), David Barclay (SUNY-Cortland) and Austin Post (USGS-retired). Carl Kannenberg (‘04) completed his I.S. using tree-rings from the North Pacific Rim and the Midwest to model Lake Erie levels over the past several hundred years. His work was presented with Greg at the Ohio Lakes Management Spring meeting in Columbus.

During the summer Greg worked with Bob Varga, Elyse Zavar (‘07) and Josh Michaels (‘05) on the Late Pleistocene/Holocene record in lake cores from Brown’s Lake in Wayne County. Together with Amanda Trenton (‘05), Elyse and Josh, Greg is compiling data from bog and lake cores and alluvial fans in northeast Ohio to better characterize Holocene changes in the region.

Greg and Independent Study students, Nick Young (‘05) and Will Driscoll (‘05), began work at a new research site in Alaska in the Chigmit Mountains where the Alaska and Aleutian Mountains meet. Their work involves developing a network of tree-ring series from the Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. Will Driscoll will use aspects of this work as his I.S. Nick Young is continuing to work on the tree-ring record of Prince William Sound where he hopes to be able to tree-ring date glacier advances dating back to the first millennium A.D.

Greg traveled to fareast Russia to core trees on Sakhalin Island late this summer. This work extends the paleoclimate data collected over the years from Alaska and is in cooperation with Olga Solomina from the Russian Academy of Sciences and co-workers at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Greg served on several committees, and with Karrie McAllister (‘98) led a walk for the Wooster community on the landscape evolution and geology of Wooster Memorial Park (Spangler). Greg now serves on the board of the Friends of Wooster Memorial Park. Together with colleagues from the Tree Ring Lab at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Greg was a co-author of an article that appeared in Climate Change. Greg also authored a paper that appeared in Geophysical Research Letters, which describes the influence of solar variability on temperature variations over the past 1000 years in Alaska. Greg continues to serve as Associate Editor of Tree Ring Research.

During the Fall 2004, Greg will be teaching a new course Climate Change and Processes and Concepts of Geology; in Spring 2005 he will teach Environmental Geology and newly modified course now called Geomorphology and Hydrogeology.

Environmental Geology class examines soil from a no-till agricultural plot at the OARDC.

Mark A. Wilson

Chairman

Lewis M. and Marian Senter Nixon Professor of

Natural Sciences

(B.A. Wooster, 1978; Ph.D. Berkeley, 1982; Wooster since 1981). Mark taught Processes & Concepts of Geology and Invertebrate Paleontology in the Fall Semester, and Sedimentology & Stratigraphy and History of Life in the Spring of 2004.

Mark had three Senior Independent Study students in 2003-2004. Jessica Hiznay (‘04) studied the distribution of a Pennsylvanian limestone unit in an underground mine in northeastern Ohio. She and Mark were assisted by the chief geologist of the mine, Tim Miller (‘82). Jessica’s goal was to determine the causes of “bad roof” in the mine, which she did. Aaron House (‘04) and Andy Shields (‘04) were part of an American Chemical Society (Petroleum Research Fund) grant project to sort out the paleoecology, taxonomy, and distribution of Ordovician borings in the Upper Mississippi River Valley. They spent part of the summer in Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana, northern Kentucky, and southern Ohio collecting bored substrates from various Middle and Upper Ordovician units. Aaron concentrated on the borings in the domal bryozoan Prasopora, and Andy looked at the dynamics of the “worm” boring Trypanites.

Mark did fieldwork on Long Island, The Bahamas, in the Spring of 2004 with his new I.S. student Drew Feucht (‘05) and Al Curran of Smith College. They examined the stratigraphy and paleoecology of the transition between the Pleistocene and Holocene on the island. Some of their work has already been published in a conference guidebook.

Paul Taylor (The Natural History Museum, London) and Mark published an extensive paper this year on hard substrate communities through time in Earth-Science Reviews. You can own your own copy of this magnum opus by sending your mouse to:

www.wooster.edu/geology/Taylor&Wilson2003.pdf

In November 2003, Mark traveled to Argentina to be a keynote speaker at the Reunión Annual de Communicationes de la Associacion Paleontólogica Argentina. He made several new friends and colleagues and was able to see a little of the geology of the Pampas. He hopes to return to Argentina during his leave in Fall 2005.

Mark returned to Israel this summer to do paleoecological studies in the Triassic and Jurassic sequences in the central Negev Desert. This time he took two I.S. students, Kevin Wolfe (‘05) and Allison Mione (‘05). The three of them worked with Yoau Avni (Geological Survey of Israel) studying issues of Mesozoic stratigraphy and paleoecology. Their work on a Jurassic rocky shore sequence will be presented at this fall’s annual GSA meeting in Denver.

Suzanne Boyenton (‘05), Jeff Bowen (‘06), and Monica Umstead (‘06) went with Mark on an expedition into central Tennessee this summer as part of Mark’s ACS-PRF grant for Ordovician work. Suzanne will be using the rocks they collected as part of her Senior I.S. work on carbonate paleoenvironments.

This year Mark gave numerous public presentations on his experiences in Israel and on the perpetual topic of teaching evolution in the public schools. His audiences included various groups of students and faculty at Wooster, the Columbus Natural History Society, the Cleveland Metroparks, and First Presbyterian Church of Wooster.

As a sign of advancing age in his profession, Mark was named a Fellow of the Geological Society of America this past year. He continues to serve as the Program Coordinator for the Paleontological Society, as an Overseas Representative for the Palaeontological Association, and as a member of the review boards for Choice and American Reference Books Annual. He is also a member of the advisory board of Geology Today.

This year Mark is teaching History of Life and Invertebrate Paleontology in the Fall, and History of Life and Sedimentology & Stratigraphy in the Spring. He is also in the third year of a three-year term on the Teaching Staff & Tenure Committee. He is very much looking forward to his research leave in the Fall of 2005.

Karrie McAllister

Department of Geology Technician

(B.A. Wooster, 1999; Wooster since 2000) This is Karrie’s fourth year managing the seismic station for the College. She is also working with the state survey on expanding the educational uses of OhioSeis and hopes to do some outreach programs and add educational web pages.

Karrie is also a Musikgarten teacher, teaching music to children ages 0-3 at the Wayne Center for the Arts. Also, on September 15, 2003 The Daily Record published Karrie’s article When the Earth shakes in Ohio.

She, her husband, Ryan (‘00), and daughter Ellie (3) welcomed a new addition to their family. Their son Toby was born in November 2003.

Patrice Reeder

Administrative Coordinator

Departments of Geology, Philosophy, and

The Pre–Law Advising Program

(Wooster since 2000)

Patrice began as our Administrative Coordinator in November after coming to us from the Dean of Students Office. She has been busy learning the ins and outs of Scovel Hall.

Patrice worked during the first semester of 2003-04 with a faculty search for the Philosophy Department. She organized the many special activities hosted by both departments, including The Twenty–Third Annual Osgood Lecture, The Seventh Bell Distinguished Lectureship in Law, the 2003 Midwest Regional Tournament of the American Collegiate Moot Court Association (the first one to be hosted by Wooster), and Philosophy’s Phi Sigma Tau dinner and induction ceremony.

During the summer of 2004, Patrice facilitated the roof replacement of Scovel Hall, the remodeling in Scovel, and the renovating and moving of her office to the former GIS lab. It all turned out great. Please stop by and meet Patrice in room 116A when you are on campus.