Above: Madeline Marshall ’12 explains how Macalester prepared her for her PhD program at the University of Chicago. Madeline completed her PhD at Chicago in 2018, and she recently accepted a tenure track position as an Assistant Professor at Albion College.

Geology graduates find that their Macalester education has prepared them well for the next steps in life, whether they seek advanced degrees in the geosciences or choose to follow other paths to adventure.

  • Rachel Surprenant ’18 (Carmel, CA) is presently working on her master’s degree at the University of California, Riverside.  Her work focuses on understanding an enigmatic group of tubular fossils in the Ediacaran fauna.  She recently conducted field work in the Flinders Range in South Australia.
  • Glen Hartford ’17 (North Andover, MA) is an army engineer officer stationed in South Korea with the 130th Engineer Brigade, 8th Army.  He recently published a Geological Society of America Special Paper with professor Alan Chapman on the U-Pb geochronology of the Franciscan Complex in California.
  • Brooke Hunter ’17 (Stillwater, MN) is presently working on her PhD in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oregon, where she is studying geomorphology, specifically as it relates to land displacement and post-fire erosion processes.
  • Anik Regan ’17 (Tucson, AZ) is presently (2018-2019) working as a post-bac researcher in the Geology Department (Rogers, Curry Rogers lab) here at Macalester College. She spent a good part of last year working as an intern with the Minnesota Geological Survey, and she is presently exploring graduate programs.
  • Sierra Swenson ’17 (River Falls, WI) is completing her master’s in geology at the University of Georgia, where she studied the sequence stratigraphy of the Ellis Group in Montana.  She is presently looking at PhD programs and about to start a summer internship with ExxonMobil.
  • Cedric Hagen ’16 (Rosemount, MN) is working on his PhD program at Oregon State University, where he is studying chemostratigraphy and carbonate sedimentology.  Cedric was recently awarded the Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation.
  • Hannah Wilson ’16 (Durham, NC) worked for the U.S. Geological Survey after graduation conducting field work in Missouri, and she is now working for the Minnesota Department of Health in Minneapolis.
  • Jessie Shields ’16 (St. Paul, MN) is working on her master’s in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Fresno State University, where she is studying metamorphic petrology of a melange zone in the Franciscan Complex of California.
  • Hali Englert ’15 (Castle Rock, CO) completed a master’s in earth science education and a teaching residency at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City.  She is presently a high school science teacher in Brooklyn, NY.
  • Bolton Howes ’15 (Lakewood, CO) recently completed his master’s in geology at the University of Georgia, and he is presently working on his PhD at Princeton University.  His work focuses on understanding the transition from icehouse to greenhouse conditions in Earth history.
  • Ilian De Corte ’15 (Philadelphia, PA) is a PhD student in the Institute of Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is studying how shallow marine invertebrates, particularly corals, respond to ocean acidification.