alumni reception - Syracuse Universe Department of Earth Sciences ...

I will be teaching EAR111 in the fall, and I am truly
looking forward to continued interaction with the
students. I know now that teaching will play a major
role in my future career plans.
In
addition to my
departmental
and researchrelated
activities, I have
been able to
participate in
several different
Aisha (l) with students from Girls Get It!
community and
outreach-related
activities. I spent many of my Saturday mornings
during the 2009-2010 school year volunteering with
the Science and Technology Entry Program (STEP)
in the School of Education. During my time with
STEP, I worked with one of the Syracuse City School
District (SCSD) Earth Science teachers to facilitate an
earth science academic enrichment program for ninth
and tenth grade SCSD students. In early July 2010, I
was the Camp Director for the inaugural Girls Get It!
Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
camp here at SU.
With the cooperation of JP Morgan Chase,
SCSD and SU, we brought 32 middle school girls to
campus for a week of exciting science and engineering
activities, as well as exposure to life on a college
campus. The students enjoyed the camp immensely
and many have already requested to come back next
year!
Jocelyn Sessa
I have just finished an enjoyable first year as
a post-doc with Linda Ivany. My research focuses
on quantitatively assessing the effects of climatic
perturbations on factors such as faunal turnover,
origination and extinction rates, and geographic
range during the late Cretaceous through Paleogene
of the Gulf Coastal Plain (GCP). I primarily work
with mollusc fossils. I recently submitted a paper
on the environmental and biological controls on the
diversification and ecological reorganization of GCP
marine ecosystems.
A wealth of data on the geographic occurrences
of taxa through this time interval for the GCP are
published in monographs, and for the past year I have
supervised the creation of a taxon-locality matrix from
these sources. I supervise six researchers (high school
through postdoc) in generating this dataset, which
has evolved into an online database. The database
currently contains ~15,000 localities and nearly 3,000
taxa. Once the database is completed it will be freely
available online.
Climate is characterized using stable isotopes
of mollusc shells, including seasonal reconstructions.
We have generated mean and seasonal temperatures
for most of the early Paleogene, as virtually no data of
this kind exist for the GCP. I have supervised Trevor
Schlossnagle in the collection and analysis of these
data. Along with Linda, Scott Samson, and Trevor,
we are working on combining strontium isotope ratios
with oxygen
isotope data
to evaluate the
influence of
paleosalinity on
shell chemistry
and to assess
the potential of
87
Sr/ 86 Sr for age
control in shelf
Jocelyn showing off her “Orange
Pride” even in Africa!
settings like
the GCP.
I have
begun working with colleagues in southern Africa
and Portugal to reveal a record of molluscan diversity
from the tropics. Many modern mollusc genera arose
following the K-Pg extinction, when certain bivalve
and gastropod clades underwent an explosive global
radiation. The tropics are frequently implicated as
being the ‘cradle’ of this speciation burst, but are
severely undersampled in relation to North America
and Europe. In February, 2010, I spent three weeks
in Angola with two Portuguese colleagues on a
reconnaissance trip. We identified numerous Late
Cretaceous and exceptionally preserved Miocene and
Pleistocene sections for further study. We are planning
a return trip in early 2011. I will begin a fellowship at
the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
in November, 2010.