Letter from the Department Head

The longer I sit in the Department’s Chair, the more I’ve come to appreciate all the living and moving parts that make up our Department. From my viewpoint amidst the ad min, teaching mineralogy, petrology, and other courses on the hard-rock side (now being recast with critical minerals at the center), and my engagement with all my friends, students, and colleagues, the Department is as creative and productive as ever.

I don’t know what I’d do without our fabulous staff who just get things done: Kate Cosgrove managing all of our budget matters; Sarah Hammer keeping our labs running and doing many other things to help keep the faculty focused on their work; Mike Menard keeping our hardware, instruments, vehicles, and all the other wheels and gears running smoothly; and Krista Smilek guiding our students and their courses, finances, and decision-making, and

marshalling everything through the complex UC systems. You guys rock!

And I’ve learned that to do it right, being Department Chair is a full-time job (surprise, surprise, right?) but I’m keeping a few research fires burning. One blaze is collaborating with colleagues at the KGS and the Illinois State Survey analyzing the REE potential of carbonatites and a variety of mica peridotites in the Illinois-Kentucky Flurospar District (a project that was initiated through the help of one Paul E. Potter). Another is mapping mid-crustal meta-igneous bedrock in southwestern Connecticut. I’m collaborating with colleagues at UMass and the USGS on monazite and xenotime geochronology linked to the trace element chemistry of garnet to track how crustal thickness changed through time (this approach is called “petrochronology” nowadays).

My faculty colleagues had another banner year in external funding. New funding this past year totaled over $2 million! (not to mention the over $1.5 million in continuing external funding). Funding was awarded from the National Science Foundation (to multiple proposals), the USGS, the Ohio Water Resources Council, the Duke Energy Foundation, the Conservation Paleobiology Network, the Ohio Geological Survey, and Parks Canada on topics including geophysics, bedrock mapping, imaging of groundwater dynamics and monitoring groundwater quality, ecology, Quaternary glaciation, biogeochemical markers, and climate reconstruction. The diversity of funders and the range of topics bespeaks to the creativity of our faculty and graduate students. Our community should be proud of both the individual and collective accomplishments. Along with just under 100 peer-reviewed publications last year – including four in the renowned Geology and 20% having graduate students as first or co-author – the evidence is clear: we are a research-active group with a very strong pulse.

Our undergraduate majors and graduate students have done their best coping with the still on-going effects of Covid-19. In all honesty, there has been a vague malaise lingering in our building as we just can’t quite get the pandemic completely behind us. To put it simply, all our students are facing their prospects in an uncertain world. They need our support. But don’t get me wrong, our students continue to achieve. Several of our majors are involved in research projects and six of them applied for and were awarded GROGUs (the Departmentfunded Geoscience Research Opportunity Grants for Undergraduates) putting them on the road to research capstone projects. Our graduate students continue to make us look good, too, successfully receiving external funding for their work, including grants from the University Research Council, UC’s chapter of Sigma Xi, GSA, the Dry Dredgers,

the Ohio Geological Survey, and SEG. For the second year in a row, one of ours won the highly competitive and prestigious Dean’s Dissertation Completion Award.

Thankfully, we were back in the classroom with our students this year, with full-on mask wearing last fall and mask-optional classrooms beginning earlier this spring. For our majors, we are still offering broadbased education in modern geology: we had courses in mineralogy, petrology, structural geology, geomorphology, paleontology, geochemistry, sedimentology, groundwater, and geobiology. For juniors, seniors, and our graduate students, upper-level courses in R, geomechanics, and groundwater modeling are opportunities to build their quantitative skills. On top of all that, Carl Brett took undergrads out into the field all year long (following university-required, strict safety protocols last fall); these trips include Carl’s graduate students and his cadre of undergraduate TAs. Transportation costs for these trips are supported by our endowed funds: thank you. I was on an outcrop of Kope with Carl last fall for a couple of hours and Carl not only knew just about everything in the rocks, but he linked many field observations to larger global cycles and processes…very exciting and a pleasure to learn about the latest thinking about our celebrity bedrock.

We are also getting more students into our labs and getting them more hands-on experience with instruments, large and small. Our Undergraduate Geochemistry Teaching Labs initiative to acquire new equipment to use in our classes continues. The College expressed its approval by awarding us $21.5K in Information Technology and Instructional Equipment (ITIE) funding for portable spectrophotometers, and portable pH probes. Just to mention a few examples, through Andy Czaja’s geochemistry and Aaron Diefendorf’s biogeochemistry courses, and Reza Soltanian’s research at the TEMMS, our students are getting more hands-on practice with instruments and collecting data. Dylan Ward is running LiDAR drone surveys as part of a collaboration at the Cooper Creek Experimental Watershed and having students work with big data. Dan Sturmer teaches applied geophysics and plans to take a group of undergrads out to Nevada this summer to collect field data on the Spruce Mountain landslide.

Another component of our teaching mission has been brought back to life, post-lock down. We are running department field trips: this May to northern Nevada and in early August a trip from Duluth, MN up to Thunder Bay. Again, your generous support of the Department makes all of this happen. During the past year, the Department dedicated $106,000 to support our students through scholarships, hands-on learning, field trips, and awards.

There are other interesting and novel projects afoot. In collaboration with the Geology-Math- Physics Library, the DAAP Library, and the Engineering Libraries, we invested $5K in a new, high resolution, largeformat scanner which now being set up in the GMP Library. I have in mind digitizing and archiving the rich and multiple-file-cabinetsfull history of the Department recorded in photographs, field trip guidebooks, letters, sketches and drawings, notes, and other materials that Warren Huff has kept and safeguarded. Later this summer I will be talking with the digital archivist and university records manager and the manager of UC’s Preservation Lab on how to approach this project. We are also investing $1,600 to rehab several of our student petrographic microscopes to bring the total number of completely functional ‘scopes to about 20. This is a good thing since to paraphrase Ron Broadhead, in many, many 21st century avenues of the geosciences, “we need to know what rocks are made of and how they are put together.”

Again, this year, it has been rewarding connecting and reconnecting with many of you. I’ve enjoyed our conversations at our recent GSA meeting here in Cincinnati, in the Department and the field, over the phone, and, of course, via email (and thanks to our loyal readers of Friday Field Notes! As always, I

welcome your comments and your generous sharing of photos.) Over my many years in the Department, I’m still impressed at how engaged and dedicated our alumni are, both newly minted and, shall we say, of more distinguished vintage, and everyone in between. Despite the pandemic-related challenges of the past two years, our community remains as strong as ever. I know I speak for the faculty, staff, and students when I say your commitment to and support of the Department are treasured. Your support is vital for our continued success in teaching the next generation, our research with our graduate and undergraduate students, and strengthening our social fabric through field trips, outreach, and an array of departmental activities. I hope to see more of you during the coming months and with your help, keep the Department successful and moving forward. With best regards,

Craig

P.S. As many of you know, Dr. Attila Kilinc is retiring after 52 years of research, teaching, and service to the Department. We are planning to celebrate Attila this coming fall with an in-person event in Cincinnati. Details will be coming soon!

HOW TO GIVE

If giving by check, donors should make their check payable to The University of Cincinnati Foundation and in the memo portion of the check, write-in “Research Fund in Geology” or “Geology Alumni Graduate Fund”. Please send your donation to

The University of Cincinnati Foundation PO Box 19970 Cincinnati, OH 45219-0970

If online, donors should go to https://foundation.uc.edu/give Once on the website, under the “Select Area to Support”, click on the “UC Colleges/Units” button. There will be two drop downs. On the left drop down, they will select “College of Arts & Sciences”. On the right drop down, they will scroll down and select “Research Fund in Geology” or “Geology Alumni Graduate Fund”.