Fall 2014 Newsletter - Center for Integrative Geosciences

Fall 2014 Newsletter
LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR
Dear UCONN Alumni and Friends!
On behalf of the faculty and students in the Center for Integrative Geosciences, I send you
warm greetings from Beach Hall! It has been a very busy four months since I joined the
UCONN faculty and assumed the role of Director of the Center. The faculty and students have
been extremely welcoming and we have begun working on a number of new projects and
initiatives. One of the most exciting things we have done is to begin the process of
restructuring and revising our 1000 level curricula and creating a mechanism by which they all
can feed into the major, thereby avoiding students taking duplicated courses. We have set the
lofty goal of making these courses the BEST on the UCONN campus. We also plan to offer a
course within UCONN’s Early College Experiences that will be targeted towards high school
students interested in geology and the geosciences with the hope of not only educating high
school students about geology but also recruiting potential majors. We also have been writing
grants for funding projects related to climate change, sedimentary modeling and CT Scanning
and 3D printing.
In addition to my own arrival on campus in August, came the arrival of the Connecticut State
Geologist, Dr. Margaret Thomas, with whom was have begun collaborations, including a
sponsored internship for a UCONN Geoscience student in her office. Since the last newsletter,
we had the departure of Dr. Christophe Dupraz. We will be hiring a visiting professor for Fall
2015-Spring 2016 to teach some of Christophe’s classes. I will be hiring a post doctoral fellow
for my lab as well, so if you know of any good candidates for either position, please let them
know of these opportunities. We also received funding from the Dean’s office for renovation of
the rock saw room as well as other physical space within Beach Hall. This will include an
upgrade and relocation of the computer room.
Continued, page 2….
Letter from the Director
(continued from page 1)
Geoscience faculty continue to be highly productive within their research and teaching
activities. Many of our faculty and students gave presentations at the annual GSA meeting
and UCONN hosted a booth that got a lot of visitors. Others will be presenting as invited
speakers or organizers of sessions at AGU in December.
With the close of the semester and the advent of another year, it is with great hope that we
move forward into 2015. Dr. Byrne and Dr. Ouimet will be running their Taiwan course in
January and we will also offer a three week field course in the Bahamas in the coming year
with plans to expand our international course offerings to Italy and possibly Ireland in the
near future.
With so much activity and excitement generated in the Center, we welcome you all back for
a visit to campus at any time! We are particularly grateful to the donors to the Nugget Fund
which has been used to support student participation in meetings and on field trips. We are
also looking for support to establish individually named student scholarships as well as
contributions towards proposed US based field courses to the Colorado Plateau as well as
the Taconic Orogenic Belt. We also seek support for an endowed chair for the Center that
would be specific to Geosciences. This is our Santa “wish list.”
We wish YOU all a happy holiday season for you and your family! Go Huskies!
Lisa Park Boush, Director
Fall 2014 Events
 Fall 2014 Seminar
Series
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Srinath Krishnan (UNH)
 “Using leaf-wax biomarkers
to reconstruct hydrological
changes during Eocence
hyperthermals”
Ashley Helton (UConn NRE)
 “Flow paths to floodplains:
Scaling hydrologic and
biogeochemical processes in
large alluvial river
floodplain-aquifer
ecosystems”
Noah Snyder (Boston College)
 Deglaciation to dam
removal: Climatic and landuse controls on New
England river processes”
Haiying Gao (UMass Amherst)
 “Upper mantle structure of
the cascades from full-wave
tomography: Evidence for
3D mantle upwelling in the
back-arc”
Martin Briggs (USGS)
 “Surface geophysical
methods for evaluating
stream habitat and the
resilience of aquatic systems
to climate warming”
 Student Events
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Faculty/Graduate Student Welcome
Picnic, August 2014
 Faculty and graduate students
gathered at Natchaug State Forest
to welcome new and returning
students
Undergraduate Welcome/ Information
Session (September 2014)
 Undergraduate majors and
prospective majors were welcomed
back to campus and provided with
major and program information
Career Development Series (October
and November 2014)
 Career Services visited Geosciences
to give students an overview of their
services
 Faculty provided students with
internship and graduate school
information
End of Semester Banquet (December
2014)
 Faculty, staff and students will
gather to celebrate the many
accomplishments throughout the
semester
Geological Society of American Annual Meeting 2014
The Center had a strong presence at the GSA Annual Meeting in
Vancouver in October 2014 with a number of faculty and graduate
students attending.
• Andrew Bush was the chair of a session (Ecosystem Paleobiology and
Geobiology: Energy, Nutrients and Food Webs in Deep Time) and was the
author/co-author on four talks.
• Jean Crespi Attended as Second Vice Chair of the GSA Structural Geology
and Tectonics Division and is now First Vice Chair of the division.
• Will Ouimet was involved in five presentations, two of which were invited
talks.
• Lisa Park Boush was involved in four presentations during the meeting.
• Andrew Beard (PhD student) and Katherine Truong (MS student)
presented their research at the meeting. Additionally, Sarah Vitale’s (PhD
student) award winning poster from Northeast GSA was on display at the
meeting.
• Patrick Getty (Visiting Assistant Professor) attended the meeting and staffed
the Center’s booth in the Campus Connection, where prospective graduate
students were able to gather information about attending UConn to earn a
graduate degree in Geosciences. Alumni were also invited to visit the booth to
connect with faculty and students.
Geological Society of American Annual Meeting 2014
Photos, clockwise from top left: PhD student
Andrew Beard presents his research; Andrew
Beard, Lisa Park Boush, undergraduate Greg
Ostrinski and Visiting Assistant Professor
Patrick Getty at the Geoscience graduate
student recruitment booth; the recruitment
booth; Master’s student Katherine Truong
presents her research.
Faculty News

Lisa Park Boush joined us in August 2014 as the Center’s new Director. Her arrival was featured in
Inside CLAS, read the article here: http://clas.uconn.edu/2014/09/19/geoscientist-lisa-park-boushjoins-uconn-faculty/. In addition to attending the GSA Annual Meeting she also attended the C4P
Geochronology workshop and the STEPPE Executive Committee meeting in Boulder, Colorado.

Andrew Bush was very active at the GSA Annual Meeting, he chaired a session and was involved in four
presentations. He also joined the editorial board of Palaeontologia Electronica.

Tim Byrne, along with Jean Crespi, were asked by NSF to be the lead organizers of a join U.S.-Taiwan
workshop on mountain building, surface processes and climate. Byrne partipated in an NSF proposal
review panel in October and is currently organizing the Center’s second Study Abroad trip to Taiwan,
which will take place during Winter Intersession 2015.

Jean Crespi attended the New England Intercollegiate Geological Conference with a group of UConn
students from October 10-12, 2014. She also attended the GSA Annual Meeting in Vancouver as Second
Vice Chair of the GSA Structural Geology and Tectonics Division and is now First Vice Chair of the
division.

Michael Hren paper titled “Compositional and temperature effects of phosphoic acid fractionation on
Δ47 analysis and implications for discrepant calibrations” will be published in Geochimica et
Cosmochimica Acta. Hren’s research was featured in three presentations at the GSA Annual Meeting and
he will attend the AGU Annual Meeting in December. Hren has been heavily involved in the organization
of the Center’s seminar series and has organized a new Special Topics course on Environmental
Geoscience for undergraduate majors.

Will Ouimet presented a workshop titled “Stone Cultural Features and Ceremonial Landscapes at the
9th Annual Native American-Archaeology Roundtable at the Institute for Native American Studies.

Gary Robbins’ exhibit “Modeling the Art and Engineering of Roman Aqueducts with Legos” was
featured in the UConn Libraries Summer Exhibits: H20x2 in Summer 2014. The display could be viewed
in the Homer Babbidge Library throughout the summer and fall. Read more about it here:
http://www.courant.com/entertainment/arts/hc-ctn-art-lego-0731-20140728,0,6891532.story. Dr.
Robbins and his research group also drilled a new bedrock well for experimentation and teaching with
funds from the Environmental Protection Organization of Connecticut with contribution by Sima Drilling
Company.

Robert Thorson continued to contribute columns to the Hartford Courant, and his column titled
“Historic Image of Connecticut More Romantic Than Real” put Geoscience at the center of the state’s
identity. The article can be found here: http://www.courant.com/opinion/op-ed/hc-op-thorson-historicconnecticut-image-not-reali-20140903-column.html . Thorson was also a contributor to the Benton
Museum’s “Land Grant Landscapes” exhibit, featured here: http://benton.uconn.edu/land-grantlandscapes-pre-1950-american-landscapes-from-the-benton-collection-2/ . In addition, he participated
in the Concord Festival of Authors, focusing on his latest book, Walden’s Shore.
Student News

Congratulations to our December 2014 Graduates:

Jonathan Baldovin

Christopher O’Donnell

The Center welcomed five new graduate students this Fall. Lindsey Belliveau and Thomas
Schenck are working with Will Ouimet, Juliet Hooten is advised by Andrew Bush, Katherine
Truong is studying with Michael Hren, and Seth Travis is advised by Gary Robbins.

James Farrell received the Billings Research Award from the Geological Society of America. This
award encourages and promotes geological fieldwork and related research and New England and
Adjacent regions. James was selected to receive this award from a pool of 24 qualified applicants
from the New England region.

Meredith Fichman (M.S. 2014) submitted the following manuscript:
Fichman, M.E., Crespi, J.M., Getty, P.R., Bush, A.M., Retrodeformation of
Carboniferous trace fossils from the Narragansett Basin, U.S.A., using raindrop imprints
and bedding-cleavage intersection lineation as strain markers, Submitted to Palaios
(received 27 October).

Kyle Gearwar, an undergraduate Geoscience major, is working on a senior thesis with real world
implications. The Daughters of the American Revolution requested assistance from Dr. Gary
Robbins to solve the problem of groundwater seepage washing away the foundation of the historic
home of Governor Jonathan Trumbull in Lebanon, CT. Working closely with Dr. Robbins, Kyle has
been heavily involved in collecting and analyzing information to provide to an engineering company,
who will work to solve the problem. Kyle presented his research at the Geological Society of
Connecticut Annual Meeting in November 2014.

Sarah Vitale was the winner of the GSA Northeast 2014 Outstanding Graduate Student Poster
Award. She also awarded a scholarship from the Environmental Professional’s Organization of
Connecticut.

GeoClub continues to actively engage students in activities related to geoscience. This semester
they have organized trips to the Worcester Mineral Club’s annual Jewelry, Gem, Fossil and Mineral
Show, and a hike to Sleeping Giant State Park as well as participating in a trip to the American
Museum of Natural History in New York City. The club has also hosted numerous movie nights and
other meetings for the members.
Call for Alumni Updates
We want to feature our alumni in our upcoming Spring 2015 Newsletter! Keep us up to date on
what you have been doing by emailing Program Assistant Christin Donnelly at
christin.donnelly@uconn.edu. We look forward to hearing from you!
How to Donate to Geosciences
We are incredibly thankful for all the generous donations from our alumni. They allow our
students to get out in the field to do research, attend conferences, have gatherings throughout the
year, and countless other activities and learning opportunities.
If you are interested in making a donation to one of our accounts, you can visit:
http://www.foundation. uconn.edu/giving-to-uconn.html
To make an online donation, you can select the “give” option, choose “other fund” and designate
the name and account number that you wish to donate to.
Nugget Fund (#30825) financial support for programs within Geosciences, specifically (but
not limited to) field trip travel, student rsearch, symposia, lectures and conferences.
Additional Geoscience Accounts:
Geology and Geophysics Fund (#20268) used for general support of Geosciences
Undergraduate Field Trip Fund (#21770) , to help support the spring break field trip and
for field expenses of undergrads working on senior theses.
Andrew J. Nalwalk Memorial Award (#30030), a graduate award for Geosciences and
Marine Sciences. Award based on independent scholarship ability and determined by a 3 faculty
member committee. Financial need is not a criterion for the award.
Please note: There will be a change in the amount to create a newly endowed fund in the
UConn Foundation. While it has historically been $25k (and $10k for faculty/staff), the
minimum for endowed funds created by, in honor of, or in memory of faculty will be $25k after
Dec. 31, 2014. Also note that as long as a conversation occurs and is “documented” this month,
there's still an opportunity to have a conversation about options for creating a legacy at this
minimum. Please consider this in your end-of-year giving.