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

Hansen, Doidge, along with Hume, Popper, Peirce,
and others. They also do quite a bit of writing and
revising. The class is intense and demanding for both
professors and students. We use visitors in both the
sciences and the arts, to stimulate and to challenge the
Honors students, who come from fields that include
Architecture, Engineering, English, Bioengineering,
Math, Philosophy, Biology, Management, and
Women’s Studies. Our experimental course – and
especially the approach of really pushing the students
to sharpen their detectors and to strengthen their skills
of associative thinking -- has been profiled by the
University, College in Honors Program in articles this
year:
http://honors.syr.edu/TheCapstoneMagazine/
TheCapstone_S10.pdf (see p. 21) and http://thecollege.
syr.edu/pressrelease/trischkadiffee2010.htm.
been successful with the broad range of students in the
course. It was a bit hectic at moments, as for example,
when the Chile earthquake occurred on Saturday
morning and the mini-lab on convergent margins was
scheduled to begin on Monday morning.
The shipwreck project has gone quite well
and I am working to finish the first draft of the book
in the months ahead. I have also been doing a series
of public lectures on the project, including the AAAS
keynote address in San Francisco last year. The
database of 2038 shipwrecks from North Carolina is
complete and fully searchable – using terms ranging
from “brigantine” to “gold bullion”! – and has
already drawn a great deal of attention in the marine
archeology and maritime history world. The book also
centers on marine and atmospheric processes as they
relate to shipwrecks; the database has documented a
remarkable history of hurricanes during the span 1526-
1984. NOAA scientists sailing out of Woods Hole
have recently used the Newton shipwreck database to
search for and re-locate the wreck of YP-389, a tiny
patrol boat that courageously held off the famously
aggressive U-701 for several hours, in a nautical
version of David and Goliath. One NOAA director
wrote to me that using the LORAN-C coordinates
from the database they “sailed right to the shipwreck”.
I am serving as the Department faculty’s
Alumni Liaison this year and am enjoying hearing
from you. Please write to me: crnewton@syr.edu.
Cathryn Newton reacts to the surprise unveiling of a
glass sculpture dedicated in her honor.
On the other end of the spectrum, I taught
approximately 390 students in Spring, 2010, in Earth
Sciences 105. Outstanding TA’s Dave Gombosi,
Aleece Nanfito, Josh Taylor, and Nathan Graber
worked with me to create a more interactive, minilab
curriculum that was tightly integrated with the
lecture material. We used the earthquakes in Haiti
and Chile in the mini-labs, and in general developed
a curriculum that was much more hands-on. We are
currently developing a manuscript to submit to GSA
TODAY on this approach. This real-time approach
-- in which we imported examples from breaking
geologic events during the semester and enfolded them
in the experiments and assignments -- seems to have
Scott Samson
The past year was a very busy one for the
isotope geochemistry group. After trips to England and
Germany to ‘shop’ for mass spectrometers, I decided
to purchase one from the English company Isotopx.
The new instrument arrived in May 2010 and after a
too-exciting evening we had it off the loading dock
and up on the third floor (see action photo!). Most
of the summer is dedicated to thoroughly testing the
instrument (with the occasional break to watch world
cup soccer matches). The instrument is truly state-ofthe-art
and we encourage all alumni, potential new
students, and friends of the Department to come and
see the new laboratory.
As for ongoing research we continue to
pursue our detrital zircon studies, including getting
a grant from the US Geological Survey to study
earliest Cambrian sandstones from the length of the
Appalachians – one of many projects PhD student