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MESSAGES FROM THE FACULTY

I am here in Cardiff for the spring term as the Director of the Wales Study Group, based at the University of Wales. I have had the opportunity to teach 40 third-year Cardiff undergraduates in an honors sedimentology course. It is interesting to compare the teaching/learning styles here vs. the US. The work here tends to be more lecture-dependent, with practical lab opportunities more limited. The department offers a number of field trips and I have taken good advantage of those.

Nancy and our daughters Beth and Caity are here with me, and the girls are enrolled in local schools. The contrasts for them are perhaps greater, with required Welsh language now part of the primary and secondary curriculum. The Colgate students - from departments across the natural sciences - also have a course with me on Environmental Issues. Unfortunately a major oil spill along the west Wales coast has given us much to talk about.

When I return to the US in early June, I will immediately turn around and lead the off-campus to the Colorado Plateau and Grand Canyon, and will then join up with Jim McLelland for a trip to Montana to check out future OC possibilities in the Montana Rockies. When I return to Hamilton, I will pick up on my continuing research on the various aspects of basinal fluids and diagenesis in the Paleozoic rocks of New York, and fluid inclusion work on, of all things, some Adirondack rocks. After all these years of seeing the 'Dacks with the Chief, I finally have developed research interests on the late-stage hydrothermal alteration of the younger gneisses and granites.

I will miss my 25th Colgate reunion in June, but hope that returning geology alumni will manage to toast in my memory.