Happy Earth Day!

April 22, 2016

Year-End Picnic & Awards Ceremony Tomorrow: The Year-End Picnic and Awards Ceremony is scheduled for Saturday, April 23, noon to 3 pm. This year's event will be held at the Weber County Fairgrounds and a catered barbecue lunch will be provided. We are asking you to bring appetizers, salads, or desserts to share. Family and friends are welcome. A flyer and map to the fairgrounds are attached.

All those who have R.S.V.P.'d, please watch your email tomorrow. If we need to change the location, due to weather, we will let you all know via email. If you are coming and have not yet, R.S.V.P.'d, please do so today so we can include you on the email notification tomorrow.

Maps for Year-End Picnic & Awards Ceremony Attached: Please see the attached maps for our year-end event. Also, please note that if you plan on using your phone to pull up a map on the day of the event, please use Google Maps, because the exact address of our location is not in the MapQuest directory.

Get Your Geology Club T-shirts! Geology Club t-shirts are on sale through the end of the semester, and there will be some at the end of year picnic and awards ceremony for those who would like to make a purchase. Please contact via text Kelsey Minnoch (801) 814-1459 or Misti Haslam (801) 544-3719. The cost is $10.

Congratulations to the Geoscience Graduates Recently Accepted to Graduate School:

Michael Hess (University of Utah); Benjamin Marconi (Columbia University, NY); Ashley Provow (Utah State University); Kevin Rafferty (University of Nevada, Las Vegas); Edward Zajac (Lehigh University, PA)

Good Bye, and Thank You, Holly: Holly Barker will teach her last class as a Geoscience Adjunct Instructor next week, which will complete 30 years of teaching at Weber State! Her Tuesday evening offering of Physical Geology has been a mainstay on our semester schedule for many years. Holly will also retire from the Weber School District at the end of the school year. Holly is an alumna of our department. She also completed a master's degree at BYU and worked as a petroleum exploration geologist before starting her career in science education.

Last Days to Complete Online Course Evaluations: Your evaluations and feedback, especially your written comments, are very important as we work to improve our teaching and course materials. Please take a couple of minutes to complete the online evaluations. Thank you for your attention to this important announcement. Direct Link: https://chitester.weber.edu/evals.cfm, or scan this QR code with your phone.

Finals are Next Week: Final exams are scheduled for April 26-28.  Please see this page for scheduling and more information. Monday, April 25, is the last day of regular classes.

Need an Interesting GEO Elective for Fall 2016?: Dr. Carie Frantz, our most-recent faculty hire, will co-teach Geomicrobiology (GEO 3753) with Dr. Michele Culumber (Microbiology). The interactions between microbes and geological processes is a hot topic for current research. Check it out.

USGS Fact Sheet The attached fact sheet that was released earlier this week by the USGS (attached) summarizes the probability of a major earthquake along the Wasatch Front. It was determined that the region has a 57% chance of having a magnitude 6 earthquake in the next 50 years, and a 43% chance of having a magnitude 6.75 earthquake in the next 50 years. A magnitude 6.75 earthquake would be a fault-rupturing earthquake that could cause extensive damage to the Wasatch Front. Good thing we will be moving into the new building soon.

Come in for Advising: Please consider touching base with your departmental advisor to discuss your course selections and overall degree progress. The advisors are listed below: We want to help you during the registration process to help save you time, effort & money -- come see us!

   All Graduating Seniors (Summer & Fall 2016): Dr. Rick Ford   

   Geology: Dr. Rick Ford

   Applied Environmental Geosciences: Dr. Marek Matyjasik

   Earth Science Teaching: Dr. Rick Ford

   Geospatial Minor/Geomatics Certificate: Dr. Michael Hernandez      

Free Walk-in Geoscience Tutoring: The College of Science Learning & Testing Center is located on the 2nd floor of the Science Lab Building(SL 229). Students can walk in and receive free tutoring for their Geoscience, Chemistry, Microbiology, Physics and/or Zoology classes. The schedule for the Geosciences tutor, Jason Whittier, is Monday & Wednesday, 9:30am-10:30am.

Montana Bureau of Mines & Geology Call for Papers: The Montana Minerals & Mining Symposium, hosted by the Montana Bureau of Mines & Geology, will be held in historic Butte, Montana on October 18-22, 2016.  The conference theme, "Geology of Metallic Mineral Deposits of the Northern Rocky Mountain Region," is in tribute to a long history of geologic studies, mineral exploration and mining. Please see the attached flyer for more information and categories for abstracts.

Photo of the Week:

Dr. Liz Balgord explains the stratigraphy and structural complexities exposed along Highway 14, east of Cedar City, on a GEO 3550 Sedimentology & Stratigraphy field trip to southern Utah. (Photo credit: Benjamin Marconi)

Have a great weekend!

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