News

  • Geology Winter 2021 newsletter–catch up on the the latest news and updates from the Geology Department!
  • Congratulations to Professor Ray Rogers, named an endowed chair and Macalester’s latest Dewitt Wallace Professor of Geology! (11 February 2020) This is an honor bestowed on a small group of faculty members who are doing amazing work on all fronts – teaching, scholarship, and service to the college and their community. Ray will be giving an inaugural lecture in the future to celebrate the appointment.
  • Geology Spring 2018 Newsletter–all the dirt (and rocks) from the 2017-18 academic year. It was a busy one!
  • Geology Spring 2016-17 Newsletter–Read all about the 2016-17 academic year!

 Past Events

11/17/2023

Geology Seminar: Putting the dead to work ...

Jansen Smith, Mac ‘12, Professor, Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Minnesota, Duluth, will speak on "Putting the dead to work: Conservation Paleobiology from Local to Global Scale."

11/7/2023

Geology Seminar: Mysteries....

Claire Zurkowski, Mineralogical Society of America Distinguished Lecturer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will speak on "Mysteries beyond our solar system: characterizing the mineralogical building blocks of multi-Earth mass exoplanets."

10/11/2023

Department of Geology Seminar: A Reappraisal of Olivine Growth Rates

Benoit Welsch, Macalester Visiting Scholar, will speak about Olivine.

"Olivine is a ubiquitous rock-forming mineral that can record a wide variety of dynamic processes during its lifetime. However, the details of its crystallization from a silicate melt are complex, specifically regarding crystal habits and growth kinetics.

"Olivine can develop a wide variety of crystal shapes depending on its crystallization environment, at growth rates spanning 10 orders of magnitude, from 10-16 m/s to 10-6 m/s and more. In this talk, I will present results of dynamic crystallization experiments using a heating stage microscope to investigate in situ the early stages of olivine crystal growth inside a plagioclase-hosted melt inclusion. I will also touch upon how large discrepancies between datasets can arise from a variety of methodological inconsistencies, limitations, and outright errors, as well as broad uncertainties regarding the timing and manner of crystal growth." 

4/14/2023

Geology Senior Research Presentations

Come support your 2023 graduating seniors as they present their research.

Stay as long as you can. Schedule is posted in the department so you know who is presenting when.  

CONGRATULATIONS, SENIORS!