Christie asks: What are your top ten geological resolutions for the new year?


For me, the list would include:

1. visiting the Galapagos Islands
2. visiting the high Andes (Cotopaxi, Chimborazo), Ecuador
3. finding a cool outcrop of graded beds in the Martinsburg Formation (late Ordovician turbidites in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia) that Rick Diecchio told me about last week
4. "walking on the Moho" in Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland (late summer)
5. seeing Snowball rocks and Ediacarans on the Avalon Peninsula, Newfoundland (late summer)
6. visiting Egg Mountain paleontological site, Montana
7. joining my colleague Ken Rasmussen's field trip to the Culpeper Basin, a Triassic rift valley in northern Virginia
8. some cool trip next winter break (2009-10): perhaps Patagonia? Or Antarctica?

I've also got some big teaching resolutions:

1. Running a successful and robust Structural Geology course for George Mason University (spring semester).
2. Running a successful and innovation Environmental Geology course for NOVA (spring semester).
3. Running a successful and safe Regional Field Geology of the Northern Rocky Mountains course for NOVA (summer semester).
4. Preparing and running a successful and groundbreaking Honors Historical Geology course linked with English Literature 242 at NOVA, where the English professor and I will bridge the two subjects with readings of Lyell, Darwin, "A Pair of Blue Eyes," and others (fall semester).

On other topics:

1. Finish my M.S.S.E. degree (July)
2. Buy a house
3. Put together a series of geology 'vodcasts' on local geology
4. Write a few freelance articles
5. Publish one cartoon per month in EARTH
6. Prepping (cutting and polishing) a backlog of rock samples from all over the place
7. Successfully moving the geology department into our new building

Labels: canada, ecuador, geology, msse, newfoundland, nova, south america, teaching, travel, valley and ridge, virginia