Department of Geology now Department of Earth Sciences

The Department of Geology is about much more than rocks and minerals. 

Its faculty and students perform cutting-edge research on everything from how glaciers react to climate change to how molten lava behaves during volcanic eruptions. A few of them even helped NASA photograph last year’s total solar eclipse.

To better reflect this, the department will now be known as the Department of Earth Sciences.

The change was approved Jan. 15 by President Satish K. Tripathi on a recommendation from A. Scott Weber, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. This comes after department faculty voted unanimously for the change last year.

“People hear the word ‘geology’ and they think ‘rocks.’ We study the whole Earth and want our department name to reflect that,” says Tracy Gregg, professor and chair of the department, which is part of the College of Arts and Sciences.

The change also better aligns UB with its fellow Association of American Universities (AAU) members. Most use some version of “earth sciences” for their geoscience departments.

Conversations with the department’s current and past undergraduate students suggest the name change will more effectively communicate what the department does.

“Changing our name should enhance recruitment of both undergraduate and graduate students with diverse interests and backgrounds,” Gregg explains. “Many students are vitally interested in helping mitigate the environmental hazards affecting our planet today, and rigorous, holistic study of the Earth is the best way to understand how to do that.”

The department recently launched a first-in-the-nation master’s degree in computational earth sciences. The program is aimed at both earth sciences graduates who want to develop expertise in computational research and computer science graduates who would like to apply those skills to earth sciences.

Gregg says the name change will be reflected on university signage and websites in the coming weeks.