The Chair’s Message: Geo-Bing Newsletter 2022

It’s been a busy year, with a lot of changes in the geological sciences program, after a relatively quiet 2020-21 during which we all adjusted to the “new normal,” or not-so-normal, of an ever-changing pandemic. I’m delighted to have taken over as chair last September.

We’ve been able to get back in the field with many of our classes, while keeping our aging pair of vans patched up and running. But there is no better proof that we have emerged from the most difficult days of the pandemic than the return of the Bartle field trip. Kennie Leet and Tim Lowenstein led a group of 14 to Iceland in early June, our first overseas Bartle trip! It was a fantastic experience for all, and you’ll see more about it on our website and Facebook page.

Adriane Lam will be transitioning from her post-doc position to a tenure-track assistant professor position in January 2023. You can learn more about her research elsewhere in this newsletter. She will be teaching paleontology (and working with the extensive paleontological collections still housed in the department) in addition to her continuing research analyzing the micropaleontology of ocean cores. We’re excited to have her join us in this more permanent role and bring paleontology back into the department.

Chris Wood joined us in July 2021 as department administrative assistant. She’s been a quick learner in adjusting to the new position and is a delight to work with. Her experience earlier in her career as a high-school earth-science teacher, coupled with her love of all things about rocks, makes her that much more of a valued member of the department: She understands geologists!

We have had other transitions as well. Dave Tuttle retired in May, though he is continuing to offer his services on a voluntary basis to faculty in geology and anthropology. Jeff Carpenter left at the end of June to move to Saudi Arabia, where his wife is starting a post-doc. And David Jenkins has announced that he will be retiring at the end of the fall semester. We’ll have a proper send-off at a later date. Kuwanna Dyer-Pietras will complete her Diversity post-doc in August and has chosen to move on to other opportunities.

You may have seen news stories on the Binghamton website over the last year about the research projects that a number of faculty and graduate students have been pursuing. Several of these are highlighted in this newsletter, including work by Molly Patterson, Joe Graney and Jon Schmitkons and his FRI students. Other stories are linked from our department website (check out the News tab) and highlighted on our Facebook page and/or Twitter feed.

Our undergraduate majors and minors have grown significantly this year, with more than 60 by the end of spring 2022. We also serve another 50 or so environmental studies majors who are focusing on earth science. The growth, particularly in that latter group, was a little unexpected, but it also reflects the efforts that we’ve been making to increase our enrollments at the introductory level and recruit majors through the FRI streams that Tim de Smet and Jonathan Schmitkons oversee. We had 16 graduates from fall 2021, spring 2022 and this summer (when, finally, our students have been able to attend in-person field camps).

Our graduate program continues to be very successful. Kennie Leet won a Binghamton University Graduate Research award this year and defended her dissertation in June. Our first two 4+1 combined BS and MS students, Nick Balrup and Ethan Penner, successfully completed their masters’ degrees this spring. You can see the full list of completed MS and PhD degrees here.

On behalf of all of the faculty, I want to thank all of you who have donated to our program over the past year. The list of 2021 donors is available here, where we also list donation opportunities. Your generosity is deeply appreciated and is instrumental in providing opportunities for our department and for our students.