Department/Program News:

• Tribute to Steve White. Steve White, who taught in the department full time for six years, and who continued to teach part-time after that, passed away on Feb. 6th, after a battle with cancer. His wake was very well attended. Ed Southwick testified to the love and passion that Steve had for his craft as a geology professor. A group of alum are in the process of finding a boulder (as big as we can find and move) that will be placed on campus in his memory. Steve will be sorely missed and very well remembered.
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• Steve White lecturing to students on the 1986 field trip to Iceland. We are at the front of a 1970 lava flow from an eruption out of Mount Hecla.

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• ICPMS coming to UNO. Dr. Shuster in collaboration with Dr. Dana Richter-Egger in Chemistry received funding from NSF to purchase an Induced Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer. It will be installed up in Chemistry this Spring, and will allow students and faculty to conduct a larger range of trace element geochemistry. This significantly increases the departments analytic capabilities.
• UNOGS organized a trip to the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America Meeting in Denver, which 9 students attended. With faculty and alum the UNO total attendance was at least 17. At least 6 papers/posters were given by people somehow associated with UNO.
• Spring Field Trip to New Mexico Rio Grande Rift. Alum are welcome.
• Department Geobanquet: A geobanquet for alum and others associated with the department, was held in honor of the Earth's birthday on 10/25/03. Attendance was good, and we plan to have another one this year or the next.

3/05 Jason Blair and Gaby are back in town after both have finished degrees at University of Kansas. Jason works for the Army Corp and they just had a son, Noah.

3/05 Kevin Cornwell is teaching at the University of California at Sacramento. One of his research stations requires snowshoes - lucky dog.

3/05 Jay Clausen is now working for the Corps of Engineers Cold Climate Research Lab, and indicates that the skiing has been great the last few weeks.

3/7/05 Justin Tegels works for Kleinfelder and Associates along with Holly O'Dell. After Justin and Amy climbed Mt. Etna and Vesuvius in April, Sophia Tegels was born on Feb 9th. Congratulations!

3/05 Amanda Hassler is finishing up her thesis in geohydrology this spring semester, and presented her results at the GSA Denver meeting this last fall.

3/05 Michelle Benak is doing environmental geology in the Los Alamos, NM area. She and Kris Levier recently hiked and collected rocks in northern New Mexico.

3/05 Mark Gutchewsky finished his Masters thesis at Western Washington University entitled " A paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the Ozette prairies from analyses of peatland cores, at the Olympic National Park, Washington". , presented initial results at the New Orleans AAG meeting, and is now back in Omaha working for the Omaha Lead Project and teaching for us part-time.

12/04 Greg Caron and Rachel are now parents with daughter Adele, now 11 months old. They are still working in the Department of Ecology for Washington State.

11/04 Mike Timmons is now working in the New Mexico Geological Survey. We caught up with him at the Denver Geological Society of America meeting.

06/04 Denny Jorgensen embarked on parenthood once again, with the birth of Maria Lael on June 28th. He continues to work for URS.

06/04 Kirk Heim finished his Master's Degree at University of Western Washington doing paleomagnetic research, and is working with the Idaho Geologic Survey differentiating Columbia River basalts

6/03 Mike Walters stopped by for a visit as he was crossing continents. He is on sabbatical leave from his position in Japan and has been working away at Lawrence Berkley Lab in California. Of several projects he and a post-doc are looking at how molten iron percolates out of a silicate-iron mix in planetary interiors, i.e. how cores form. He hasn't seen the movie The Core, yet.

6/03 Troy Hays and Michelle Cooper were recently married in Omaha. Michelle is working on the geochemistry of some samples from the Siquieros fracture zone in the Pacific for her M.S. at University of Florida at Gainesville, and Troy will be starting on his M.S. at the same institute this fall and plans to work on the mysteries of the Idaho batholith (which makes Bob very happy).

5/03 Teresa Reinig continues working with the Army Corp and is presently a project manager for a superfund site in Duluth, Minnesota. She also gave a presentation at Las Vegas on innovative technologies for a landfill. 5/03

Tina Alder paid a visit on 5/9/03 . She is now a supervisor for a sub-basin water resource management program in Kansas, working for the Kansas State Department of Agriculture. Plans are to start work modeling the Ogallala aquifer soon.

Greg Caron stopped by for a visit and is doing well out in Yakima, WA where both he and his wife, Rachel, work as hydrogeologists for the Department of Ecology. They have bought an old house, and recent travels including Big Bend. We hear from them that Melissa Niehsen works in the same office and is doing well. Small world! 12/02 Greg also joined us on our Missouri Breaks trip and the other students found it very interesting to talk to an experienced alumni. 5/03.

Dave Hansen has obtained his teaching certificate with endorsements in earth science and biology and has been substitute teaching. 4/03

Mike Timmons is finishing his Ph.D. at University of New Mexico, and has recently published an article on the history of the Grand Canyon Supergroup in the GSA Bulletin, and gave a talk at the GSA Denver conference. He is still floating the Colorado when he can. 10/02

The department had its 6 year review on Feb. 24th and 25th. We would like to thank Donna Erickson, Denny Jorgenson, Teresa Reinig, Theresa Silence, Tom Zink, Jeannie Chytil, Deb Myers, Kris Levier, and Dawn Stock for taking time out of their busy lives to talk to the review team. Review team members expressed sincere appreciation for the opportunity to talk with you, and were impressed by your accomplishments. Our local alumni are an invaluable resource for the department.

Donna Erickson is working for Thiele Geotech, and her daughter is attending UNO. 11/02.

Wes Engelhardt is a newly minted employee for NOAA. He has developed expertise in the field of Remote Sensing and Image Analysis, first by working for a Defense mapping agency sub-contractor in Greenbelt, MD (by the name of Greenhorne & O'Mara) for two and a half years, then moving to St. Louis to work for another mapping firm (by the name of Surdex Corporation) for another year. He has now relocated once more to the Washington D.C./Beltway area. 9/02