A Modern Take on Geological Sciences – Present
The department currently offers classes such as Planet Earth, Introduction to the Earth, Environmental Geology, Earth and Life Through Time, Dinosaurs, and so much more – much different than times of yonder years.
There were many professors and students over the years who made the department what it is today – too many to mention and recognize.
“I would suggest the students have a very open mind of what they would want to do with geology,” said Martha George of the Development Board and a graduate in geology from Mizzou. “I think it’s a very good foundation and background for a lot of careers, especially for future careers right now. And I don’t think a lot of people see that.
“Not very many students choose geology coming out of high school. They don’t go to college to major in geology; it’s something they find while they are at college. I would just recommend they keep an open mind that it could be a field they’d be very interested in pursuing.”
She said she is impressed with the geology department. “Their outreach – they go into the community and provide programs for students, different things to introduce them to science and geology. They are very active in reaching out to the community for a department, that again, is a fairly small department. I really admire that about them.”
Kevin Shelton, a long-time professor, chair of the geology department, and now emeritus Faculty, said science is interesting because if you have 15 faculty, you have 15 independent subcontractors occupying the same building.
“They are all involved with their own publication, their own grants … but they play nicely together. That’s probably what I can say about the department is that you always have interactions that are quite positive.”
Shelton says geology is changing due to technology: “So most of the early guys were studying sedimentary rocks, or descriptions of fossils, so the department was predominantly known as one that was doing paleontology.”
He added X-ray microscopy is also a part of the recent past, where faculty were taking X-rays of clay minerals to understand their structure. Next, came the application of electron microprobes such as that used by Glen Himmelberg in the geology department. Himmelberg’s research focused on ophiolites, layered gabbro complexes, and metamorphism of orogenic belts, which provided insights into the origin and evolution of Earth’s crust, the geology website stated. He retired in 2005 from the department.
Minerology was also a department gem (pun intended), Shelton added. “But now the department has sort of evolved back to paleontology.” This is due to associate professor, Jim Schiffbauer’s work with the micro CT laboratory. He and others relatively recent hires including – Drs John Huntley (associate professor), Tara Selly (research assistant professor) and Sarah Jacquet (assistant professor), use new technology coupled with geochemistry in scanning and imaging taking geology into modern paleontology.
“They are doing really sexy things in the lab,” said Shelton. “I know Jim Schiffbauer and one of his former PhD students documented the earliest embryos that were found in fossil record – looking at some of the earliest animals in this period of time called the Ediacaran, which predates Cambrian. “It’s soft-bodied organisms, so they’re looking at all sorts of fascinating things related to these organisms.”
This being said, the Department has also recently hired in the fields of Structural Geology with Tandis Bidgoli, and most recently in Minerology with Hector Lamadrid who (like Sarah Jacquet) were part of the Preparing Future Faculty – Faculty Diversity (PFFFD) Postdoctoral Program. With its twelve faculty, this moderate-sized department boasts a wide range of research expertise spanning biogeochemistry and paleontology; geophysics, tectonics and solid Earth processes; and petrology and geochemistry.
Shelton said, however, what he really wants to brag on is the alumni. “The alumni’s emotional hook is field camp, which except for the covid year has been operating continuously since its inception in 1911.”
He said alumni help in so many ways, buying new computer software, putting on new roofs at the camp facilities, building bridges across rivers at the camp location. “They all remember that was central to either cementing their love of geology, or getting them out of Missouri where they pretty much only saw limestone. It suddenly opened this whole world of seeing things that are different geologically.
“We have a tremendously large number of alumni actively involved in promoting the department.” That number could include 1100 or more living alumni, Shelton said.
The Department is exceptionally grateful for the alumni’s past and continued support and hopes to foster this relationship to better the experience of undergraduate majors and graduate students for years to come – whatever the future holds for the Department of Geological Sciences.