Allen Dennis '82
|
I am proud to have been able to return to Colgate Fall '02 as Whitnall Professor of Geology.
I am grateful to the University of South Carolina system and the research successes that I
have had here with Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation grants and
contracts, my teaching successes as a professor as recognized by the Geological Society
of America and the SC Commission on Higher Education, and my work as a departmental chair
for the past five years that made this appointment an easy one for the department to
recommend to the Dean of Faculty. Summer '02 I taught a dozen students on the Off-Campus
at Canada Lake with William Peck and at Seminoe Reservoir, Wyoming with Dave Baird,
Paul Pinet, and the Beloit, Akron, Wyoming field camps (!). In the fall I taught
Structure and a CORE: Scientific Perspectives class (no lab) on the History of Life.
The Structure class had a great four-day field trip looking at the rift-drift transition
on the Iapetan margin in NY-MA, the Taconic slate belt, the Catskill fold-thrust belt,
metamorphic rocks of western Mass, and the Deerfield Triassic basin. The only downside
to the trip was that I couldn't go to Chris Gage's ('94) wedding the same weekend!
I had a great time this past fall semester.
Unless you graduated in the past four years, Colgate Geology has probably changed from what
you remember. The faculty continue to be outstanding scholars: creative, exciting,
charismatic and devoted to their students. I can't tell you what a pleasure it was
to work alongside them. In any given semester, one or more faculty are away from the
department either tending significant University administrative responsibilities,
leading Off-Campus Study Groups or are on sabbatical. The situation is complicated by
important departmental commitments to the CORE curriculum and Environmental Studies.
The students are bright and interested, but there are fewer of them. The effects of
the addition of the Environmental Geology and other specialty or "hybrid" concentrations,
a vital and growing Geography program, increased participation in Study Groups in addition
to the OC, and the Outdoor Ed program on Geology enrollments and the geology program are
complex. It is clear that the popular menu of CORE: Scientific Perspective courses
offered by Geology faculty does not necessarily lead to concentrators or minors; and
Colgate's lack of a distribution requirement specifying two lab sciences for all students
has hurt science enrollments generally. In this context, the valuable service activities
by geology faculty and exceptional development opportunities provided by Colgate for those
faculty has resulted in postponing some needed discussions about what this outstanding
faculty agree that all students of earth science should know and be able to do, whether
at the introductory level or as graduates/concentrators. Sometimes it seemed that the
only area of agreement was that devotion to students.
I encourage you to visit and support your alma mater. You will be proud of what the
students in Geology are doing and the level of attention they enjoy from great teachers.
The defining characteristic of Colgate and its geology program continues to be the
quality of personal relationships between the students, students and faculty and the
faculty themselves. It was a pleasure to return to that company.
|
|
