University of St. Thomas

When asked what one phrase best describes the geology major at St. Thomas, a faculty member replied, “innovative and dynamic.”

Welcome to the geology facts page, where you’ll be taken beyond the course offerings and program description and deeper into the geology major. You’ll learn what St. Thomas students are doing now to enhance their educations and how recent graduates are succeeding in the real world. More importantly, we hope you’ll be able to use this information to decide if this major interests you.

A real student asks:

 

Do geologists study rocks all day?  Why do people study something as uninteresting as a rock?

A geology faculty member responds: That would be like saying, “Do English majors only study words all day?” or “Do business majors only look at balance sheets all day?” Words, balance sheets and rocks, alone, might be viewed as pretty boring, but we all know that they are just the basic material that one works with to write great literature or to analyze the relative performance of a company or to understand the earth and how it works. The huge array of rocks that isout there allows geologists to understand how the earth worked in the past, the types of events that shaped it, and, maybe most importantly, how the earth will behave in the future under unexpected or unanticipated stresses. To a geologist every rock holds a clue, a secret, a story about how it formed that tells us something about the earth and how it functions. Rocks hold all of the mineral wealth of nations (including oil); they hold 99 percent of the water we drink and use for industry. In short, geologists use rocks like chemists use elements, like biologists use plants or cells, like mathematicians use numbers: they are the raw stuff of our science.

What jobs are possible with a Geology major?

What are recent graduates doing now?

Angela Donatelle ’04 started at St. Thomas as a business major and had no interest in pursuing science. In her freshman year, however, she took our introductory geology course (GEOL 111) and became interested. She took a big risk (for her) and enrolled in our J-Term field course in the desert southwest. That is where she became hooked and later chose to minor in geology. Eventually, the minor evolved into a double-major with business, which shifted to a business minor and geology major and, finally, she dropped business altogether. She pursued undergraduate research in the Geology Department where she established herself as a hard working, thoughtful researcher. Angela is now completing her master’s degree in geology at Michigan State University and has been accepted into their Ph.D program. She is considering a career in academia, but is open to a wide range of careers because she believes that her training as a geoscientist has prepared her for many options that she had no idea existed before she chose this path.

What opportunities are there to bolster my resume while I'm in the program?

Internships. Geology students have held internships at the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory and the University of Minnesota, assisting in civil engineering and geological experiments on stream restoration. Others have taken positions at local mineral exploration firms, the Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. We do our best to work individually with students to place them with experiences that fit their career goals.

Study abroad. We do not have an overseas study abroad program yet, but it is likely that we will have a program in Baja California, Mexico within the next couple of years. Our J-Term field course (GEOL 260) is run by international education and is a very solid off-campus course alternative that nearly all participants have enjoyed.

Our students who go abroad typically choose the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Tanzania or Australia. They study a range of geoscience topics, but we encourage them to take some kind of regional, field-based course that introduces them to the rocks and landscapes of a completely different area. It is critical for geoscientists to have a broad exposure to a range of landscapes and geologies because these trips spark a ‘ripple’ of experiences that they can draw upon to understand geological principles and problems. It is also true that students grow considerably on these experiences and return more focused and prepared to move forward with the remainder of their degree program.

Faculty at work

All of the geology faculty collaborate with students on a range of projects, including:

Dr. Kevin Theissen’s students work on recent climate change, as recorded by shallow lake sediments in Minnesota and Patagonia (Chile and Argentina). His students use stable isotopes, physical and chemical properties of sediments, and biota to understand how the ecology of lakes has changed over time and how they have been impacted by climate change, land use change and other external factors. Kevin has also engaged students in research on the “Snowball Earth”, a period of time when the earth was completely ice-covered and stands as a formidable example of the extremes of climate change.

Dr. Melissa Lamb’s students work in the Lake Mead region of southern Nevada to understand how the earth’s crust is being pulled apart by tectonic forces. She uses a combination of field mapping and laboratory analysis to understand the stress and strain conditions that have shaped the southwestern United States.

Dr. Tom Hickson’s students focus mainly on sedimentary rocks and what they tell us about earth history. He has projects with Dr. Lamb in southern Nevada where he has used rock strata to understand how lake and river systems respond to huge tectonic forces. His students work also at the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory and the University of Minnesota, where he conducts studies of sediment transport and deposition in large flumes and tanks.