Phoenix, Arizona — It was a small group of Wooster Geologists at the annual meeting of the GSA held in Phoenix last week. The very early date (about a month earlier than usual) and the consequently earlier abstract deadline reduced attendance overall, especially for those geologists who needed the summer to collect data (most of our Independent Study students). Wooster had only one student at the conference: the happy Evan Shadbolt (’20) pictured above. Evan and I presented a poster on research by Team Jurassic Utah. Since we did the fieldwork in March 2019, we could get our abstract completed by the early deadline.
Dr. Greg Wiles gave an oral presentation on Holocene Alpine glaciation in southern coastal Alaska with a group of Wooster student and staff co-authors representing the Wooster Tree Ring Lab.
I was very proud to be part of a poster presentation on the Middle Jurassic of Israel by Yael Leshno Afriat, a graduate student at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. It was a delight to see Yael again, and her poster brought back great memories of fieldwork in the Negev.
The GSA annual meeting is where the Paleontological Society has its own annual meeting. This year long-time friend of Wooster Geology Dr. Paul Taylor was awarded a Fellowship of the society. Richly deserved. Search this blog for “Paul Taylor” and you’ll see how important he has been to us for decades.
The annual Wooster alumni gathering was, like every other event at this meeting, unusually under-populated. Nevertheless it was a great group, and there were alumni there we hadn’t seen at this meeting before. The photograph is of those present at our traditional 8:00 pm Monday picture time. There were several other Wooster geologists at the meeting who could not make it to the event at this time.
Next year in Montréal! This meeting will have more reasonable dates: October 25-28, 2020.
Thanks for your kind comments Mark. I was sorry not to have been in Pheonix to receive the fellowship but glad to read your report of the meeting.
Paul