DENVER – The Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences had a strong showing this past week at the national meeting of the Geological Society of America. This year is the society’s 125 anniversary and they really pulled out all the stops at the meeting. It was a HUGE and truly dynamic meeting! Left-Hand Brewery even crafted a special microbrew to help us celebrate! Over 8,000 academics, graduate students, undergraduate students, and professionals were in attendance. The entire faculty (Drs. Fox, Pearson, Rademacher, and Burmeister) and three Pacific students (Katie Teague ’15, Andrew Dai Wilson ’14, and Brittany Klemm ’14) traveled to Denver for the meeting.

• Dr Pearson chaired a very popular technical session on Geoscience Education and Outreach and presented a paper that provided an overview of the past 75 years of work by the National Association for Geoscience Teachers (NAGT).
• Dr Fox presented a paper on undergraduate research as a teaching practice within the context of work by the Geosciences Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research.
• Brittany Klemm (’14) and Dr Burmeister presented a paper examining evidence for an unusual post-folding vertical flattening strain fabric that they recently discovered while studying deformation in mechanically rigid rocks in the northern Appalachian foreland fold-thrust belt.
• Dr. Burmeister also presented two other papers at the meeting. The first summarized the results of a recent collaborative effort using “quick-look” techniques to balance a set of serial cross sections through the northern Appalachian fold-thrust belt. The second paper summarized the first 50 years of the Wasatch-Uinta field camp. In particular, this paper highlighted recent improvements to the program, including improvements to health and safety and fundamental changes in the way the course is managed. Dr. Burmeister also completed a short course on modern digital geologic mapping techniques (#514), continued his service as a member of the Management Board and Committee Chair in the Structural Geology & Tectonics Division of the Geological Society of America, and chaired the annual planning meeting for the Wasatch-Uinta Field Camp. Finally, Dr. Burmeister and Dr. Phil Brown (Univ Wisconsin) recieved the GSA-ExxonMobil Field Camp Excellence Award at the 2013 Geological Society of America Medals and Awards Ceremony for their efforts at the Wasatch-Uinta Field Camp.
• Katie Teauge (’15) and Dr Rademacher presented a paper exploring the relationship between microbe communities and metal mobility in urban watersheds of the eastern San Francisco Bay Area.
• Dai Wilson (’14) presented a paper on the petrography of exposures of the Miocene Neroly Formation in California’s Diablo Range that summarized the results of a research project he recently completed under the advisement of Dr Pearson.