Dick Andrus - I've
become quite comfortable in my fake geologist role and am thoroughly enjoying
Dick Beerbower's old space in 165. It's
a nice synergy. Envi and Geol are the
two programs most dedicated to field teaching and research. There's a nice
little bio-intensive garden in the courtyard below my windows that is used for
both teaching (Envi 101 & 325) and eating (Geo grads are regular
thieves). There are 3 geodogs within
close range of my dog biscuit supply. On
a more serious side, Kevin Brozyna, an Envi/Geol undergrad, is doing a natural
resource inventory of the campus natural areas this year. It's a huge undertaking involving lots of
field work and mapping. The geo grads have been a great help and been very
generous with their time, especially with mapping techniques. And the storage
shed and plastic bigwheeled carts that the geo grads wheedled out of the GSO
continue to be a major help in maintaining the natural areas. I continue to spend a lot of time in Costa
Rica on my tropical reforestation
project. We hope soon to get a geo grad from here to do some research on the
relationship of vegetation in a watershed and the character of the stream leaving
it.
Jeffrey Barker - Ah, so much to catch up on. For the past several years, my students and I
have been developing methods for modeling the seismic wave propagation within
realistic sedimentary basins. This is
important not only because sedimentary basins amplify the shaking due to
earthquakes, but also because surface waves generated at the edge of these
basins can increase the duration of shaking substantially. Our approach, the Boundary Element Method,
has typically been applied only to small, simple, unrealistic models. Application to large, realistic basins like
Mexico City or Los Angeles require us to develop a more complete description of
the 3-D wave propagation phenomena, a more efficient approach to solving this
large matrix problem, and to use a supercomputer or distributed "grid" of
computers. PhD students Kyoung-Tae Kim
and Jimin Lee have been successfully straddling this region between seismology,
earthquake engineering and computer science.
Another area of student research is associated with
the Environmental Geophysics course I teach (this used to be our Applied
Geophysics course). This is an almost
entirely field-based course using shallow seismic reflection and refraction
equipment (obtained through an NSF grant), electrical resistivity equipment
(built by Tom Petruzzelli), and the good old Worden gravimeter (which predates
me by decades). With a new NSF grant, we
are currently purchasing Ground-penetrating Radar (GPR) equipment, which will
add significantly to our ability to image the subsurface. Students apply this equipment to answer
questions and solve problems relevant to local environmental issues. For example, following a building fire on the
Vestal Parkway which was
attributed to a leaking underground gasoline tank, the class attempted
(unsuccessfully, I'm afraid) to locate the contaminant plume within the Twin
Orchards neighborhood of Vestal. The
following year, the class concentrated on a closed landfill at the Triple
Cities Airport
in Endicott. This is the probable source
of contamination of Endicott's drinking water supply. John McCallen's Masters thesis
has grown out of the class work: which shallow geophysical techniques work in a
dump, and which don't? Subsequent
classes have concentrated on areas of campus; first doing the site characterization
for the hydrological wellfield between the "Hell" parking lot and Fuller Hollow
Creek. Later, the question was whether
the knolls that separate the Nature Preserve ponds from the lower portion of
campus are bedrock features (they're not).
This contributed to Dan Michaud's Masters thesis
on the ponds' water budget. The next
year the class chose to study the West knoll; from the clearing right behind
College in the Woods to the Hinman tennis court. This has become the site of construction of a
new set of dorms. The class took the
subsurface "before picture" and determined that the water table was quite a bit
shallower than indicated in the engineering report for the dorms. Finally, last Fall,
the class concentrated on the back side of the Nature Preserve ponds toward Stair
Park. Bedrock is exposed in the park, but is quite
deep under the knolls. So, what happens
in between? Their result shows that
bedrock dips to the north, but flattens out fairly quickly. There may be one or more step offsets in bedrock
near the Ravine trail.
I've also been
enjoying teaching non-Geologists. My
introductory Geophysics class satisfies the General Education requirement and
has grown to 116 students this semester (that has less to do with my dynamic
teaching style than current economic pressures). It is actually fun to figure out how to
present a complete and balanced survey of topics such as global warming, the Core
dynamo and olivine phase transitions in the Mantle to a lecture hall full of
Sociology majors. I use a lot of
demonstrations, and original, hands-on lab experiments. The textbook is a substantial set of notes distributed
via the web. Beyond the university, I've
been working with Glenn Dolphin at U-E
High School and Tim Conner at Chenango
Forks High School
to develop curriculum materials and hold teacher training workshops. I've been on the IRIS (Incorporated Research
Institutions for Seismology) Education and Outreach committee, and through that group still present workshops for college professors
and teachers at GSA and NSTA meetings.
The past couple of years, we've run summer courses for kids in grades
4-6, first in hydrology, then in paleontology (who, me?) and this year in
earthquake engineering. Finally, I've
been involved with an NSF-funded program that funds graduate students in
Geology (as well as Biology and Physics) who spend time helping design and test
hands-on science activities in grades 5-6 of the Binghamton
School District. The fellowship stipends are substantial (the
NSF maximum), so these fellows tend to be our best graduate students. This experience should make them excellent professors
some day.
Isn't that
enough? Well, not really. To blow off steam (in a manner of speaking),
I play French Horn in the Binghamton Community
Orchestra and the Southern Tier Concert Band.
I've also taken up fencing (saber, specifically) and have competed at
the national level, though in the old men's division. My daughter, Carolyn, is applying to
colleges, and my son, Steve, is looking for work in the computer industry.
It's been great
to receive emails from those of you who have filled out our alumni web form
(http://geology.binghamton.edu/alumni.html). If you haven't visited that site yet, take a
look. Many of our alums have contributed
information and email addresses. I'm
sure there are many more. Let me know if
you have any suggestions for our alumni webpages, or if you encounter any problems. I'm hoping this newsletter will be posted
there, and of course, you can check the faculty pages for periodic updates.
John Bridge – No news was contributed this spring.
Steve Dickman - Hi,
everyone! In the interests of time and
variety, here are some "key words" describing (in random order…) my
past year of professional and personal life:
Professional
big Global Warming course
Seminar on seminars (new
course)
rotation and core-mantle coupling
rotation and mantle anelasticity
atmospheric angular momentum and Wiener filters
Unix and ocean tides
CD 'burning'
Personal
High School "All-Nighter"
empty nest (go, Fighting Blue Hens!)
mid-life
promotion for wife
tennis (hyperCarbon really rules!)
Joe Graney - is continuing his environmental geochemistry
work using metals as tracers of processes. As an outgrowth of projects
involving environmental health issues at Hillcrest (Binghamton, NY), his
research in 2002 included performing work at Department of Defense facilities
where stockpiles of strategic materials are stored. This research was supported
in part by a Dean's Research Semester Award.
Another major ongoing research area involves processes in watersheds, including
sediment sources and surface water hydrology in relation to wetland
construction. Two current graduate
students are working on comparing processes in suburban watersheds (Karen
(Jacobs) Garrett in the Fuller Hollow Creek Watershed on the Binghamton
University Campus) and rural watersheds (Erin Wood in Catatonk Creek watersheds
in Tioga County). Former graduate students are holding
their own in the private sector job market including Suzanne Karajaberlian
(Corning Inc.), Tim Eriksen (Shumaker Engineering) and Abigail (Santiago) Roberts (AES Westover Electric
Utilities). Dawn Graney is keeping busy by working at the Guthrie Clinic (in Sayre, PA) and teaching at Broome County Community College. Dawn and Joe spend vacation time visiting
nephews and nieces in Wisconsin and Michigan. Joe also reports that his father-in-law introduced
him to the rigors of salmon fishing on Lake Michigan last summer, an experience
that actually involved a few interesting "science applications". Feel
free to contact Joe for more details.
Dave Jenkins – This past Fall 2002
semester my family and I lived in Edmonton, Alberta. That's in western Canada
just east of the Canadian Rockies, for those of us who are "geographically
challenged". It was an opportunity
for my family to live in a new part of the world and for me to learn the ins
and outs of operating a really-high-pressure squeezer. The University
of Alberta set up the second
super-press that was ever installed in North America
(the first was actually in Stony Brook).
For those who are curious, the super-press is of the cubic anvil design
and applies pressure to a sample placed inside an octahedron of magnesium oxide
held between the truncated corners of eight tungsten-carbide cubes. Preparation of the sample, pressure medium,
and the cubic anvils involves some pretty fussy operations which are best
learned by working with folks that routinely use this technique. Professor Robert Luth at the University
of Alberta was very generous in
allowing this "interloper" from New York
access to the superpress. My goal, as
you might have guessed, was to try and make an amphibole. In this case it was the sodium-rich amphibole
glaucophane, which is the mineral that gives blueschist metamorphic rocks their
characteristic blue color. My goal in
making glaucophane was partly successful, but I will wait for the next GeoBing newsletter
to share the exciting conclusions of this research (after I figure out what
they are).
Jean and the
boys are all doing well. William is now
in 10th, Kenneth in 8th, and Andrew in 2nd
grade. Jean continues to develop her
freelance inspirational writing. Please
write to me if you get the chance, or better yet send me a short e-mail at
dmjenks@binghamton.edu to let me know where you are and how you are doing. I would love to hear from you.
Peter Knuepfer - I've
taken over from Burrell Montz as director of the environmental studies program. The program is going strong, with a growing
number of majors, increased interest in the introductory courses, and an
increasingly strong cohort of faculty in environmental science (including Geology's
new hire, Sid Mitra). We're also
delighted to have Ken Wong visiting the Asian American Studies Program from
Hong Kong; Ken is an environmental geographer with a Ph.D. from Syracuse ESF
(Environmental Science and Forestry), and he's adding a lot to the breadth of
offerings in environmental studies this year.
We remain limited in our faculty in policy and law, however, due to
retirements and no replacements in kind.
Meanwhile, I continue to be involved in faculty
governance, both at Binghamton and at the State-wide level, where I serve on the Executive
Committee of the University-wide Faculty Senate. It's informative to see the degree to which issues
on Binghamton's campus are common across SUNY (and
equally informative to see the differences among concerns across the
campuses). At the State-wide level we're
lobbying for restoration of budget cuts to SUNY and to maintain faculty control
on campuses of assessment of general education (would YOU want to take an exam
to "prove" what you've learned in college?)
And, lest you think I'm only doing
administrative things these days, I'm working closely with Francis Wu on a
major proposal for work in Taiwan.
Students and I are continuing to work on histories of pro-glacial lakes
in New
York,
including post-glacial isostatic rebound.
I was back in Taiwan in January to participate in an invitation-only
Penrose Conference sponsored by the Geological Society of America on the
interplay of tectonics and climate in landscape evolution. It was a fantastic meeting in the midst of
one of the most spectacular places in the world, the Taroko Gorge (look it up
on the Internet if you don't believe me).
So, fortunately, I manage to keep my hands dirty (figuratively and literally)
in the research world.
Tim Lowenstein - As always, seeing and hearing from so many of you alums has been a joy. The party in Denver was hugely successful until the keg
emptied and even after that. I will be
attending the AAPG meeting in Salt Lake City in May and the GSA meeting in Seattle in November, and I hope to see some of
you there. Let's see, I have heard from
so many of you -I apologize in advance if I didn't include you here: Chris Plymale
(EPA, Atlanta), Dan Brownstein (earth science teacher in NY), Andy Bobst
(spotted on main street in Miles City, Montana-had a great jog with you on the
river in Denver, Andy), Osama Attia (professor in Cairo), Jen Palmieri
(Monteith, in Champagne-Urbana), Sean Brennan (USGS Reston), Billy D'Andrea (finishing
M.A. degree in Nebraska, with new son Calvin, congratulations Billeee), Chris Staiti (law school in Baltimore), Andrea
Cicero (Conoco-Phillips, now in Houston), Jeff Pietras (PhD student at Wisconsin,
almost finished), Kathy Benison (Central Michigan, now with kids John and
Colleen), Chris Brown (consultant at Conrad Geosciences, Poughkeepsie area), Jianren
Li (IBM, Westchester, with new young Allison), Matt Hein (now in St. Louis in
seminary school), Abby Roberts (Santiago, employed right here in Johnson City),
and Jason Chung (somewhere in New York City).
Secular changes in seawater chemistry,
once a heretical and risky idea, has now become the latest bandwagon, which
means it is time to move onto something new.
But before we finish, we still have a few things to say about how
seawater chemistry may have influenced the evolution of marine shell-building
organisms, including the "Cambrian Explosion of Life" (Sean Brennan
PhD thesis). New on the horizon is geobiology and the search for ancient organisms inside
crystals. We are trying to culture and
"revive" ancient organisms like in Jurassic Park, except bacterial spores, not dinosaurs,
fit inside fluid inclusions. Cindy
Satterfield, Mike Timofeeff and I are planning to build a lab to do this work
in Science 1 in the not too distant future.
Until then, we are collaborating with microbiologists Russell Vreeland
and Bill Rosenzweig at West Chester University.
Jonathan Kramer recently finished his master's thesis on the paleotemperature
record from Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia.
New PhD student Mike Calaway is working on paleoclimate records from
coralline algae and diagenetic calcite from Yucca Mountain.
We published papers this year on the paleoclimate history of Death
Valley (Smithsonian Contributions to the Earth Sciences), Salar de Atacama
(Journal of Sedimentary Research, GSA Bulletin, and Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology,
Palaeoecology), Salar de Uyuni (Quaternary Research, in review), and the
relationship between fossil seawater and sedimentary basin formation waters/basinal
brines (please keep your fingers crossed on the reviews on this as we are about
to submit for Science Magazine).
For those of you who know my family: Kirby
and Sally are trying to repeat as New York State champs and 3rd in the world in Odyssey of
the Mind this year. Sally is still a
teacher at Vestal Middle
School and Kirby is a student there.
Scott just started high school, growth status - 6 feet 2, size 13's,
pretty intimidating at the net in tennis.
Maggie just finished applying for colleges (she is a second semester
senior at Vestal High
School, and anxious to graduate.
I always tell her how much fun she will have in college!).
Bill MacDonald - continues to explore applications of magnetic properties of rocks to structural and tectonic problems in studies underway in Nevada (with colleagues
Gromme, formerly of the USGS, and Prof.
Palmer, University of Western Ontario), in Colombia (with former student Juan
Estrada, PhD 96, who visited Binghamton
in Feb 03; and with former student Gloria Sierra MA 94, now professor at
Eafit University, and with current MA student Daniel Maeso). He also is studying
the Vargeao impact structure of Brazil (with Dr. Francolin of Petrobras and
current MA student Chris Poulos). He chaired a session (with Prof. Ozdemir, Univ. of Toronto) at the Fall 02 AGU meeting on
applications of magnetic anisotropy to petrologic problems, and is planning another
session for the Fall 03 AGU meeting (with Prof Housen, Univ. of Western Washington).
Bill is also co-authoring a paper on the Diana Syenite, Adirondacks, with former student Graham Baird (MA
01), who is now a PhD student at Univ. Minnesota. Bill will be an invited speaker at the
next Colombian Geologic Congress, in August 03.
Sid Mitra -
It is indeed a pleasure to be writing this as the newest addition to the
faculty in Geological Sciences and Environmental Studies here at Binghamton. I am an Environmental Scientist with a specialty
in tracking the fate and transport of trace organic chemicals in the environment. For the benefit of those who are not familiar
with the main subject areas of my research, organic/environmental geochemistry,
I have provided below some background information.
One
major area of research, which I will be introducing here at Binghamton,
deals with the environmental cycling of black carbon and its effects on the
global carbon cycle. Black carbon is the
residue left after combustion processes such as biomass or fossil fuel burning
(Fig. 1). Investigations of historical
black carbon deposition in sedimentary environments can offer evidence of
historical land use practices. Another
area of research with which I am involved deals with the science of organic contaminant
bioavailability. For example, why is it
that an organic contaminant presents deleterious effects to a community of
benthic organisms in one area but not to another community of the same organisms
in another area? The answer may not lie
so much in the organisms’ biological response but more so in the natural
organic matter composition of the sedimentary matrix to which the organisms are
exposed. Finally, the third area of research
with which I am involved, deals with tracking the fate and transport of the
active ingredients in many pharmaceutical and personal care product chemicals
in the environment. Many of the drugs we
ingest as humans are being detected in aquatic environments and may pose a
significant threat to the ecosystem. Addressing
questions such as 1) How long historically have these chemicals been released
into the environment?… and 2) What are the factors
that affect the stability of these chemicals in the environment ?… are tantamount
to minimizing their potential environmental hazard.
Much of my research is comprised of
fieldwork coupled with extensive laboratory analytical work. Depending on the scientific question at hand,
fieldwork can entail sampling water, suspended sediments, and sediments in
river and seabed environments (Fig. 2a, and 2b). The corresponding laboratory
work entails extraction of natural matrices with organic and inorganic solvents
for example using a microwave apparatus (Fig. 3) and finally analyzing
chemicals with instruments such as a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer.
I
firmly believe that promoting scholarship at the university level requires not
only a strong and cutting edge research program but also a sound educational program. In that context, I will initially be teaching
Environmental Geochemistry, Isotopes in the Environment, and Introduction
to Organic Geochemistry at the undergraduate and graduate levels. I hope to also eventually teach special topics
courses such as Organic Contaminant Fate and Transport in the Environment to
students in our department.
As an organic/environmental geochemist
with a background in marine science and oceanography, I anticipate collaborations
with several of the faculty here as well as researchers at other institutions.
In short, I am very excited to be
here and look forward to getting my research and education program up and
running as soon as possible.
Dick Naslund – We
returned from our sabbatical year in Chile
in August and spent most of the fall getting everything out of storage and
putting the house back in shape. We had
a wonderful year in Chile. I got a lot of research done on the relationship
between volcanism and ore deposits, my wife Cheryl spent the year doing research
on the introduction of internet learning to the Chilean school system, and the
children all learned to speak Spanish like natives. We traveled all over Chile,
camping, sightseeing, and doing geology.
We took the children up to 16,750 feet in the Andes
to look at the El Laco ore deposit, and crossed the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia
when it was covered with water. We drove our jeep 50 km through half a meter of
water and the water depth didn't vary by more than 30 cms. The salar is incredibly flat.
I had a busy fall teaching Igneous and
Metamorphic Petrology, the volcanoes half of Volcanoes and Earthquakes, and
Geology of the Solar System. After a
year off from teaching I had to pay my dues.
This semester I am teaching Introductory Geology and trying to write up
the results of my Chilean research. In
addition to looking at field relationships and analyzing ore and host-rock
samples, my students and I are doing some experimental work on the role of
volatiles in ore deposit genesis. If you
want to see one of the most spectacular ore deposits in the world, I am helping
to organize a field trip to El Laco, Chile
in the fall of 2004. Stay tuned for details.
Herman Roberson - Year 2002 was a pretty quiet one for me and my family. On the
academic front, the Fall 2002 semester was the third and final year of my
Bartle Professorship, so very soon I will be a full-time retiree----my wife
trembles at the thought, even though I keep trying to convince her that I will,
undoubtedly, be on campus as much as I have been in the past. We shall see.
This past Fall I co-taught (with Tim Lowenstein
and Bob Demicco) a graduate seminar entitled " Sea
water chemistry from the Cambrian to the Recent". There were eight grad
students, a post-doc, Mike Timofeeff, and visiting faculty participating; all,
I think, had a good time. I know I did. My research activities are still primarily
focused on clay minerals- what else? I am presently trying to make sense of the
role clay minerals play in the sea water evolution story. Right now, this means
I need to pull together from the literature the chemistry of clay-bearing
assemblages that formed when hydrothermal saline brines reacted with basalts in
the sub-seafloor environment.
On the home front, I am happy to report
that my wife, Jeannette, and I had a good year. Our first and only grandson,
Nicholas, who is now 16-17 months old is the focus of
much attention. Jeannette and I are looking forward to a family reunion with both sons, Christopher and Matthew and their respective
families in Hilton Head in mid-January. Jeannette and I will spend a couple of
weeks there at this time. Jeannette and I anxiously await news as to when the
N.Y. Dept. of Transportation will force us to move from our present home in Johnson City. We have purchased a home in Vestal (near
the MacDonald’s home), so once we get settled over there I can get in good
daily walks to campus just about every day.
I hope you will take a few minutes to send us a short note to keep us up
to date on happenings in your life. Your classmates and the faculty look
forward to your news.
Karen Salvage - It has been a productive year since the last Geo-Bing
alumni newsletter. I received a Dr.
Nuala McGann Drescher Fellowship in support of a research leave for the Spring 2002 semester.
This grant provided me with an opportunity to focus on research and
development of a new manuscript for publication with my graduate student Yong
Wang. Hydrogeology graduate student Luke
Salogar presented his Masters Thesis research at the Fall Meeting of the
Geological Society of America in Denver. His poster was very well received. Luke is now making an impact on the next
generation of geologists as an Earth Science teacher.
Binghamton Grad
Chris Neuzil, a geologist with the USGS in Reston,
visited with us during Spring 2002 and presented a
great talk titled “Strange But Apparently True – Groundwater Flow Driven by
Differences in Chemistry”. Two other BU
Geology alums visited the department this fall:
Sin Senh and Craig Werle of Roux Associates, an
environmental consulting firm. They
presented a hydrogeologic assessment of a Super Fund site, and met with some of
our current students about opportunities at Roux. Sin and Christine are building a new
house. Good luck to them!
Mike Alfieri
has kept in touch. He is presently a Hydrogeologist
with Haley and Aldrich in Boston. It was nice to see Daniel Michaud at a
meeting of the New York State Water Resources Association last spring. Dan is working with The Chazen Companies in Poughkeepsie. I am still using data from his thesis on the
hydrology and geology of the Nature Preserve in my classes. I have crossed paths with a few non-hydro
alums over the past year: I saw Graham
Baird at the Fall GSA Meeting in Denver. Graham has given up the opportunity to be an
environmental consultant and seems to be having the time of his life in his doctoral
program. Eric Kent stopped in to
hear Sin Senh’s presentation; Eric had completed a cross-country trek (and
survey of western geology) since I had seen him last.
I presently have six graduate students: two doctoral candidates, Jean Jolicoeur and
Yong Wang, and four Masters students, Charlann Walker,
Lynette Vayo, David Heuer, and Glendon Hunsinger. Each is working on a different research project
related to hydrology, which is keeping me busy.
Last fall, I taught Hydrogeology (for GEO students) and Environmental Hydrology
(for ENVI students). This was the first
year that I taught the ENVI class as a “lab” class, and we enjoyed using the
campus Nature Preserve as our “lab” throughout the fall. This spring, I am
teaching a graduate seminar on groundwater – surface water interactions, as
well as keeping my graduate student collaborators moving forward!
Jim
Sorauf – is
filing this report prior to leaving for the south. The early departure is caused by 1) ease of
travel from Tampa to Denver,
where the GSA meetings are being held, and 2) threats of snow in Binghamton. My address in Florida
is: 986 Spinnaker Court,
Tarpon Springs, Florida, 34689. Geologists are always welcome as guests at
our house in the sun.
Last year I somehow went south
without leaving an entry for the Geobing Newsletter with Bob Demicco, and I
have been mentally paying the price for it ever since. Above all, I neglected to note that there was
a remarkable retirement party in May of 2001, honoring me (and perhaps above
all, my decision to retire from teaching).
It was one of the memorable nights of my life, and I admit to being
truly amazed that former students and old friends came to the party, some from
great distance. To start to name those
would do injustice to some others, so I will just note that one guy came from
Rangely, Colorado, who thus is the long distance champ in my book, although
there really was a collection of champs there that evening. Friends from North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, District of Columbia, and who knows where else, even from Endicott. Letters came from farther away, Alaska,
Colorado and Washington
being the farthest, with remarkable comments on past days and fun we had
together. Just writing this now makes me
shake my head that so many people actually seemed to want to come from out of
town, and also from in town, and by mail, to celebrate my passing (not yet
demise). I can't properly express my
gratitude for the affection shown me, somewhat to my surprise, so I just hope
that your charitable actions for an old timer will
generate a reward for you someday. Gold
stars for all, and if any of you ever need a favor, just ask.
Simone and I purchased a house
in Tarpon Springs in 2001, and you will be glad to hear that this is the first
successful investment I have ever made.
My real estate in Binghamton is worth less now than it was 15 years ago,
a nice part of my retirement funds evaporated in the 1999-2000 stock market
plunge, but my southern real estate is climbing in value, especially since the
hurricane season is past. Any of you
that drive down the west coast of Florida
into the Tampa area should stop and
see the sponge fisherman in Tarpon Springs (all Greeks). Give us a chance and we'll show you the
Souvlaki joints (Greek food if you didn't know).
When in Binghamton
(before the fall snow and after melting of the spring snow), I am at the department
every day, devoting myself to writing and editing. I am finally getting the time that I long
needed to finish up lots of coral projects, and am getting it published
now. The past several years have been
very good ones form that point of view.
I did want to gets lots of trout fishing done this summer (2002), but
instead suffered a true drought in the Binghamton
area, and there just plain was no water in the streams in upstate New
York. I guess
that the trout died in large numbers, but there never were any photos in the
newspapers. Also, I nursed a herniated
disc in my lower back this summer, so didn't feel peppy enough to go fishing
part of that time.
I am truly glad that the
department is pretty well habituated to having an alumni get together at the geological
society meetings each fall, and I am (at this moment, long before the Geobing
newsletter) looking forward to seeing old friends at the Binghamton party in
Denver. I do hope that there is an
alumni "angel" to help support Bob Demicco's good efforts in insuring
that there is such a mini-reunion each year.
Stop by on your way to Disneyland
(which I have yet to visit). Jim (and
Simone)
Francis Wu
-I am writing this little
note from, you probably guessed it, Taiwan.
It is 5 AM
local time - perfect moment to start the day.
I am attending a workshop here on ocean bottom seismometry, a method we
have to use if the proposal we submitted last December is funded. This is a group proposal from the US and it calls for cooperation with
colleagues from Taiwan and Japan to mount a comprehensive effort to test
hypotheses regarding the tectonics of this very young mountain range. Pete Knuepfer is a part of this group as
well.
Otherwise, we finished the deployment of a
seismic network in southern Tibet last November. Our 13 instruments sat on the north slope of
the Himalayan Range and our colleagues from U of Colorado
were in Nepal with 14 instruments. We had the Everest - or Jolmolungma in
Tibetan - surrounded. Now data are back
and analyses have already begun. We did
record a good number of earthquakes under the Himalaya and a large number of them from around
the world. We will image the mountain
range and wish to get some hint how exactly the mountain became so high. I have enjoyed the multiple ventures into the
incredibly beautiful back country of Tibet.
We worked with monks, local government, property owners and farmers to
build our stations. I really feel that I
got a good feel of what Tibetan lives are like.
I did quite ok with high altitudes, much better than the first time I
went (in 1979). I am now already missing
the good local spicy mutton dishes.
Alumni News and Notes
Ed Baltzer (MA '89) is the branch manager for Walsh
Environmental Scientists and Engineers, LLC, in Grand
Junction, Colorado. He supervises four employees and helped to
start up two other branch offices, one in Colorado Springs
and the other in Fort Collins, Colorado. He has three children (Sarah 12, Danny 6, and
Rebekah 5) and he is hoping to complete a real estate sale in Grand
Junction.
Bruce Geller (MA '81).
He is the president of a company that has the exclusive distribution and
marketing rights for a green gemstone from Quebec
known as gaspeite (a natural nickel carbonate).
His mineralogical consulting projects in the past several years have
dealt with emeralds in India, three sub-economic platinum projects, six
potential projects in Mexico, and gemstone studies in Arizona (blue aragonite),
Tanzania (cat's eye opal), and ruby. He
extends greetings to all from Denver, Colorado.
Editor's Note:
What follows is a letter, dated May 7, 2002, from one of the
department's "pioneers" which Herm Roberson received after his
retirement party. I hope you will find
this historical view of the department as interesting as I did.
Dear Herm:
Marie and I really
enjoyed the visit to Binghamton
over the weekend, especially your retirement party. Marie still does much better at social events
than I do, but it was great to see you and Jan, Jim and Simone, Bill and his
wife, and professors from the old days like Stan Madan and Dr. Schumacher, who
were there when I was. Although I knew
very few in attendance other than those just mentioned,
it was great to see the turnout for you.
After 43 years, you certainly deserved such a send off! Hopefully you won't go too far away, or I
won't be able to return "home" again and find anyone who remembers
me.
Those occasions
always makes me think back to "the good old days." Unfortunately, I always seem to make these reflections
on the trip home, not the way up, so I was woefully unprepared when the opportunity
arose on Sunday night to make a few remarks.
For that I apologize; you deserved better.
It probably is
as hard for you to believe that you have spent 43 years there as it is for me
to realize that it will be 42 years this Fall since I
arrived on the muddy Vestal Campus of Harpur College. At that time, we had to specify between either
the Vestal or the Endicott Campus, because 1960-1961
was the last year that classes were held on both. Only 1200 students were enrolled that year, a
far cry from the number you have now, and all were undergraduates.
My six years,
and your first seven, were certainly times of transition and growth, not only
for the new college, but also for the new department that Dr. Coates was
creating with the support of Dr. Bartle.
Harpur College
in 1960 consisted of 11 red brick buildings on the Vestal Campus: the power
plant, old gym, four dorms, the original student center next to the infirmary,
the original L-shaped classroom & administration building, the library and
the science building. In the Fall of 1960 the only classes taught in the new science
building were all in Geology.
There was mud
everywhere. It looked like an old
western town with board sidewalks over the mud.
For six years the construction never stopped. Two new dorms were added my Sophomore year,
three more dorms and Newing Dining Hall my Junior year, and another dining
hall, three towers and the new science building while I was in Graduate
School. When I was in grad school, there
was a large pit an adjacent mountain of mud in front of the building, and
around 11:00 pm many nights we used
to go crazy and play "King of the Mountain" on it.
As the physical
facility that was Harpur increased in size, the faculty and student body
increased as well. The new dorms weren't
ready in the Fall of 1961, so I endured a semester of
being "tripled" in the dorms.
Two years later we tripled up on semesters. Remember the short-term, ill-fated trimester
experiment?
One thing the
trimester experiment brought with it was an extra-long summer of 1963. Graduation was on June 9 that year, and the Fall semester started around Veteran’s Day in early
November. In between we had a month-long
break from June 10 to around the 4th of July, and then brought the
first Freshmen trimester students on campus. That might have been the summer we brought
Marcia (Seide?) and Bob Kock on campus to do summer research on NSF
grants. I remember working in the
department that summer with them, having meals served outdoors by Slater Food
Service and playing a lot of softball.
We even had a Science Building
team of faculty, students and staff. I
think you played, along with Jim, Bill Merrill and Bob Koch.
In those days
all five sciences were housed in the one building, so you faculty guys had a
coffee room where you could mingle on a daily basis with faculty from Biology,
Chemistry, Physics and Psychology. Plus,
we had the machine shop run by Bill Merrill and the general storeroom for
supplies in the basement, along with our darkroom and rock prep/radiography
rooms. Lectures were held in the new
lecture hall, and labs in the new lab rooms, with real professors in charge of
both; no graduate students.
My Freshman year there were only three faculty members in
Geology: you, Don Coates and one guy I never spoke to or had speak to me
(Gerry?). He left after that year, but
by my Junior year, you had added Hugh Hunter and Jim,
as a Senior Marc Bodine and Ken Hsu were there, and while in grad school, Bill
MacDonald and Don Kissling were added, giving you a solid 8-man staff when I
left. (I always thought I did a good job
in that area.)
At the same time that we went to
the trimester, Harpur enrolled the first graduate student. In Geology, the program stated with in my Senior year with Harvey Kaplan and Fran Angollitti.
We didn't have a lot of majors
in those days; it seemed like I took all of my classes with the same three guys
(John Harrison, Jim Harrington and John Connors). I also remember Wally brother and Bob Furlong,
who were one and two years ahead of me, and Bill Cook, who may also have been a
year ahead. By the way, John Connors
lives and works in WV now. He dropped by
my office one day last Fall just to see if the Doug
Patchen on the Board in the lobby was really me.
Actually, one of my largest
undergrad classes was the one you taught in Structural Geology. I think you suffered through 10 or 12 of
us. Eventually we added a few women
majors, like Carmen Farr (Rottmann) and the girl (Barbara?) who later married
Bruce Molnia. But that may have been
when I was in Grad School
with Frank Caramanica, John Harrison, and those guys who came my second year
(Jim Daugherty, big and little Mike, that guy Richardson, etc).
In those days, we used to send a
large contingent to the annual NYSGA field trip meeting. We had a few tents (without floors) and
paper-thin sleeping bags, and we bought a camping trailer for the women to
sleep in. It popped up into a tent, but
I think the metal shelves were harder and colder than the ground we slept on.
Jim took his stratigraphy class
on several camping trips the Spring of his first year, but you were smart
enough not to go along, thereby saving yourself from the poison sumac
competition between Wally and John Harrison.
Wally lost that, "big" time; a "swell" time.
You guys were certainly good to
us in those days. I remember getting a
ride to NYC for the GSA meeting, and having a car supplied the next year for
those who wanted to drive to Kansas City
for the meeting. We also attended the NE
Section GSA meetings regularly, as well as NYSGA.
I also was able to keep body and
soul together by working around the department, cutting flow rolls for you and
Jim, or working in the darkroom for Jim or central stores and the workshop for
Bill Merrill. As a junior, before we had
Grad Students, we used to set up and break down Freshman
labs for you, but were replaced as Seniors by Harvey and Fran. I also learned to use drafting equipment, and
made extra money doing illustrations for the NYSGA guidebook when Harpur hosted
the meeting around 1963.
In preparing road logs for the
NYSGA meeting, I met Don Woodrow, and a long association started. I'm not sure if you know or not, but we in
the Eastern Section of AAPG gave Don an Outstanding Teaching Award a few years
ago. He put a lot of students into the
petroleum field over the years. By the
way, do you think any of your current or former staff members should be
considered for this award next year? If
so, pass the names and justification along to me.
I think that I have rambled on
long enough, probably too long for you to finish this on just one cup of coffee
(or one beer). But, I'm sure you get the
point: Harpur
College was a very important part
of my life, and it was so because of the close association of a small faculty
and a small student body, especially in young departments like Geology. As Harpur
College grew in Binghamton,
the department grew in size and stature as well.
I am proud to have been one of
the "pioneers" in the process, and to have been the first graduate
student for you and Jim, and one of the first three to
receive a Masters degree in Geology from SUNY Binghamton. I'm not dumb enough to believe that we were
among the best, we were just the first.
As you grew, the staff and students got better and better.
I hope you enjoyed the ride.
Doug Patchen,
B.A. '64; M.A. '67
