Greetings! I hope this newsletter finds all of you doing well. We've been keeping busy here at Colgate, as usual, as you no doubt can tell from the information in this newsletter, including plans for the new science building, hiring new faculty, teaching courses, the OC, and everything else.

      I've never been keen writing about myself, so I'll tell you about the research students I've been fortunate to have joining me on various projects over the past few years. Last summer, with the help of the Freeman Foundation, several students and I traveled to Japan for three weeks to carry out a project focused on the volcanoes of Kyushu, the southernmost island of the Japanese mainland. We carried out fieldwork on 3 spectacular volcanoes, Aso, Sakurajima (which has ongoing Vulcanian eruptions, for those of you who are volcanically inclined), and Unzen, which erupted in the early 1990s. These samples became the basis of an honors project by Ashley Nagle ('05), who is attending Brown University for graduate studies this fall and who will be presenting her findings from this project at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco in December. As some of you know, I also teach a course on the advent of the atomic bomb, and some of the students on this trip were former members of this class. They focused on the role of terrain in the Battle of Okinawa during WWII, and on its importance in the ultimate decision to use the atomic bombs in 1945. We collected digital images and information about the geology and geography of Okinawa and Kyushu, and the students developed a series of activities that we've implemented in the atomic bomb course to illustrate the importance of terrain in battlefield strategy. Evan LeBon ('05), a geology minor who also graduated this year, presented his findings at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC; some of the course activities will be presented by major, Starr Waymack ('06) and Michael Carrington ('06, a history major) at another meeting this fall.

      This year, Branden Christensen ('06) and I are embarking on a field expedition to study the magmatic evolution of Hekla volcano, in Iceland, long thought to be the gateway to hell in some myths, so it should be quite an interesting trip. We hope to present our results at AGU in the fall as well. In the meantime, I've been working on writing up the research findings of several other Colgate students who've done geochemical work with me, mostly on the Galápagos Islands, including Alison Koleszar, Susanna Blair, Leslie Reed, Nathan Rollins, Jay Barr, and Matt Lambert. (Alison, Susanna, and Jay are pursuing graduate degrees in geology as well at Brown, the University of Florida, and MIT, respectively).

      I was also fortunate this year to participate in a workshop in Antarctica, in the Dry Valleys; it was a fascinating month and will hopefully lay the groundwork for more research in the area. In the meantime, however, we have to pack for Iceland and get those Antarctica samples running on the mass spectrometer, so I will wish you all best wishes and please stay in touch!