Chair's message

It is with great pleasure that I share with you the Winter 2022 edition of EPOCH, the newsletter for the Department of Geology here at the University at Buffalo. Despite the continuing challenges of the pandemic, thanks to the relentless work of our faculty and staff, we continue to offer the best education and resources to our students. This success would not have been possible without the generous donations of alumni and friends of our department – please accept our heartfelt thanks for your continuing support.

Although the pandemic still prevented us from organizing our traditional field geology training course out west, we were able to upgrade our “armchair” virtual field mapping of 2020 to a field training closer to home, exploring the geology of Western New York and the Helderberg Escarpment outside of Albany in Eastern New York. As part of this training course, for the first time, students could conduct an integrated study of the shallow subsurface on campus, thanks to the newly drilled bedrock wells that were funded by YOU; our alumni and friends of UB Geology.  We look forward to incorporating this wellfield in learning across our curriculum. Another highlight of the summer was the inaugural Earth Education Institute, a free professional development program for science teachers launched this year by the Departments of Geology and Environment and Sustainability.

Our faculty continue to thrive, achieving success in research and student mentoring. In 2021 we congratulated Dr. Tracy Gregg for her promotion to Full Professor. Dr. Briner was elected to a GSA Fellow in recognition of his pioneering work investigating the Arctic glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet, joining GSA fellows Richelle Allen-King, Tracy Gregg, Bob Jacobi and Chuck Mitchell. Dr. Briner was also recognized for his outstanding student advising and mentoring by UB’s Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring Award. Dr. Elizabeth Thomas has received the highly coveted NSF CAREER award for studying mid-latitude climate response to rapid warming and integrating the research into an experimental curriculum. Please join me in congratulating on their achievements! I also encourage you to visit our Geology in the News page to read more about the research of UB Geology’s faculty and students.

We sincerely hope to meet you in person soon as we prepare tentative plans for our next alumni meeting in spring 2022.

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