Department of Geology & Geography 2019- 2020 Annual Newsletter Greetings from the Chair Hello all of our wonderful alumni!! I hope this year’s edition of the department newsletter finds you well and happily exploring all of the nooks and crannies of Earth. This year was my second as Chair of the Geology and Geography Department, and the time has flown by! We have instituted a number of new items to help streamline our programs as well as bolster enrollment. Last Fall was the inaugural semester of the new accelerated Profession Science Masters (PSM) degree, and we immediately attracted three students to sign up for it. What this does is marry the students’ undergraduate experience with their anticipated graduate program. Students take graduate courses that fulfill their undergraduate requirements but these also count towards their graduate degree. In this way, the students are able to shave off about a year’s worth of time from doing their PSM, saving them time and tuition money in the process. We have also established approximately fifteen Articulation Agreements with community colleges across the state over the last couple of years, and we saw the first fruit of our efforts this Fall with a student transferring from the College of DuPage to here to pursue his B.S. We hope to keep the lines of communication strong between us and our education partners for many years to come for the mutual benefit of both sides of the arrangement. Currently, we are working to establish another undergrad/grad accelerated agreement, this time between us and Northern IL University’s law school. This will pave the way for students to get their B.S. from our department in three years and then send them up to NIU to obtain their law degree. As many firms are clamoring for environmental lawyers, this program should be attractive to incoming majors. All of these endeavors have been a lot of hard work but the payoff is being realized – this Fall, our overall number of majors has climbed by FOURTEEN PERCENT from last year. Impressive in its own right, but in comparison with the campus growth of 3.7%, it is a pretty stellar achievement. We are making great decisions and headed in the right direction in concert with what is being pursued across campus through the hard work of everyone from the President on down. It is an exciting time of growth and renewal! I extend an open invitation to all of you to visit – either by email or in person – to share your ideas, suggestions, job opportunities or internships for our majors, anecdotes of your time here, etc. We would love to hear from you. May you have a most wonderful year! Diane 1 A message from our Dean Greetings from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to all of our Geologists and Geographers out there! I am delighted to share with you that the current faculty and students in the Department of Geology and Geography continue to be as dynamic and exciting as ever. Let me just focus on the Mineral and Meteorite Collection that was unveiled in the Physical Sciences Building this past spring. It showcases both Geology and Geography and, built in collaboration with the Physics and Art Departments, alumni, and industry, is at once scientifically impressive and aesthetically stunning. The collection functions as an important resource for teaching and learning in our classrooms and also as a permanent exhibit for public edification and enjoyment. I urge you to check it out on your next visit to campus. The department is dynamic in so many ways – updating curriculum, signing articulation agreements with multiple junior colleges, maintaining impressive levels of research and professional engagement, graduating well-grounded and competitive students – we can all be very proud. Congratulations and thanks to Chair Diane Burns and all the faculty for their outstanding work and achievements! And thank you to all friends and alumni of Geology and Geography for your continuing support. Best wishes, Anita 2 In Memorium – Walter MacDonald (1921-2019) GODFREY — Walter H. McDonald, 98, passed away at 6:39 a.m. on Monday, June 24, 2019, at OSF St. Anthony's Hospital. He was one of the few remaining members of The Greatest Generation. He was born on Feb. 18, 1921, in Richview, Illinois to Willis F. McDonald and Rita Rice McDonald. He married Martha Dorothea Vaupel on Dec. 24, 1943 in Carbondale, Illinois. They enjoyed nearly 70 years together before her death in 2011. He was also preceded in death by his parents, two brothers Conrad and Frank McDonald and two sisters Elizabeth Knoloff and Dora Margaret McDonald who died in infancy. His survivors include three sons and their wives, Alan (Sandy) in Brighton, John (Vicki) in North Fort Myers, Florida, and Brian (Cathy) in Metamora. Other survivors include three grandsons, Robert, Bradley and Cameron; one granddaughter, Heather, two great-granddaughters, Liliana and Brooklyn; and one great-grandson Quintin. He was a veteran of World War II, serving with the Army Air Force. He flew 35 missions over Germany from the 8th Air Force in England. He was training to go to the Pacific arena to fly missions over Japan when the war came to a close. His life's work was in education. He earned a bachelor's and master's degree from SIU in Carbondale, and a master's and PhD at the University of Illinois. He taught two years at the high school in Vandalia, Illinois; six years at Austin Peay University in Clarksville, Tennessee; and 24 years at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston before retiring in 1982. After retiring, he taught part time at Eastern for five years, served as an officer of the Annuitants Association at Eastern, as secretary of the Charleston Food Pantry Committee, and also as secretary of the RSVP organization in Coles County. In the summer of 2000, he moved to the United Methodist Village of Godfrey where he wrote a history of UMVG, served four years as president of the Resident Council and five more years as Resident Ambassador. 3 Spotlight On – Natalie Toth, ‘08 Our very own Natalie Toth, who is now chief fossil preparator at the Denver Museum of Natural Science, is uncovering the fossils of a large horned dino in Highlands Ranch, CO! Here’s a news article written by Janet Oravetz from May 23rd: Dinosaur bone discovery turns into unique lesson for students HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. — The Denver Museum of Nature and Science (DMNS) hosted an interactive lesson for students Thursday morning following the discovery of dinosaur fossils at a construction site in Highlands Ranch. "It's a paleontologists dream; you always wait for that phone call and when you go out to the site and turns out to actually be a fossil sitting there, it's thrilling," said Natalie Toth, chief fossil preparator at DMNS. Construction workers near Wind Crest, a continuing care retirement community developed and managed by Maryland-based Erickson Living, stumbled upon the fossils earlier this month. Thursday morning, Toth and Salvador Bastien, another fossil preparator, took part in a live video chat with students from different schools. They answered questions from them while others worked behind them at the site. 4 "Some of the bones...are in a little bit better condition than the others," Toth said. "Those are the ones that were not right at the surface and exposed right as the bulldozer was going over the surface of the bone." One student was curious about the color of the bones and why they're darker than human bones. "Over time, the white part of the white bone gets replaced by rocks and minerals," Toth said in response. "So as these bones are buried in the sediment that surrounds them, they tend to take on the color and the texture of the rock that's encasing them Toth told students the recent wet weather has created challenges, but so far they've found about 20 pieces. "We have a number of ribs. We have the humerus, or the upper arm bone, one of the lower leg bones called the tibia, and we even we think we have a part of the frill or the big shield on the back of the dinosaurs head," Toth said. They're searching an area that's about 30 feet wide. "These dinosaurs have something over 200 bones in their body," Toth said. "So there's a lot left to find." Everything that's unearthed is wrapped in paper towels and then encased in plaster and burlap for the trip back to the museum. The encasing is then carefully removed so that the real research can begin. That research could lead to a new discovery. One student wanted to know how they get named. "People will name fossils based on the location that they're found like Denversaurus," Toth responded. "Other times they've named it after the rock unit they're in, so it really just depends. It's up to the researcher when they're making a new discovery and looking at all the different pieces and parts of the animal they get to make that decision about what they want to call it." Right now they're not sure exactly what they have other than it's like a horned dinosaur of some kind. The fossils will eventually be at the museum. 5 One student asked how many fossils end up in museums. "The folks that own this land, Erickson Living, they don't actually have to give us these bones. They own this land, so the dinosaur bones belong to them," Bastien said.