News

Congratulations to Victoria Holman, a undergraduate Geosciences student, who was selected to participate in the Paleontological Society Student Ambassador Program.

Baylor University's Department of Geosciences invites applications for a tenure track faculty position at the Assistant Professor level in the area of Solid Earth Geosciences, effective Fall 2024.

When Hunter Harlow (BS ’10) graduated from Baylor with a degree in geosciences/geology, he didn’t imagine taking the road less traveled.

The Spring 2023 Dr. Steven G. Driese Outstanding Grant Proposal Award winner is Alyssa Mills from the Department of Geosciences for her GEO 5222 research proposal entitled "Piecing Together the Chaos Puzzle: An Evaluation of Seafloor Volcanism on Europa through Gravity Analyses" with mentor Dr. Peter James.

Dr. Joshua Brownlow, Baylor Geosciences PhD alumnus (2016) recently co-authored a publication demonstrating a method to treat produced water in an effort to reduce injected disposal volumes in the Permian Basin.

By Caitlyn Meisner -- After 10 years of research, collaboration and annual summer trips to East Africa, Dr. Daniel Peppe, associate professor of geosciences, and his team of global scholars — many who are Baylor graduates — published their scientific discovery that changed the understanding of East African evolution of the climate and apes.

Dr. Daniel Peppe, a Baylor geosciences professor, was part of an international team whose decade-long research has shifted Africa’s prehistoric timeline by 10 million years.
Peppe explains the team's work and findings — on the latest Baylor Connections.

How did a Baylor professor play a role in adjusting what scientists thought they knew about Africa’s historic timeline — by 10 million years?!?

Baylor Geosciences congratulates our recent graduates on their accomplishments.

Congratulations to Geosciences Ph.D. candidate, Toluwaleke Ajayi, who was presented “the most distinguished scholarship awarded by the AIPG in Texas”, the Shoemaker Scholarship. District representative, James Henderson, drove to Waco to personally present Toluwaleke with a check for $2,500.00, a plaque memorializing Mr. Ajayi’s award, and a book entitled “Shoemaker: The Man Who Made an Impact.”

Two teams of researchers, one led by a Baylor University geoscientist, working together in Kenya and Uganda for the past 10 years to study fossils of plants and animals, discovered a prehistoric Africa different than previously envisioned.

WACO, Texas (April 13, 2023) – Something as simple as a grass can fundamentally change the understanding of life in the prehistoric world. A pair of studies funded by the National Science Foundation and published in the journal Science document the earliest evidence for locally abundant C4 grasses in eastern Africa and how C4 grasses and open habitats influenced early ape evolution.

A 1-millimeter fish vertebra and a slightly longer, unidentified bone recently found at the Waco Mammoth National Monument will tell researchers more about the area’s ecosystem during the lives of the Columbian mammoths whose remains were found there.

WACO, Texas (KWTX) - Baylor’s Planetary Research Group is starting off the semester with a $260,000 grant from NASA to assist in research about the light-colored volcanoes on the moon.

Ph.D. student, Nick Wagner, will be travelling to London to obverse and participate in a science team meeting for NASA's InSight mission. The program is called InSight Seers and its designed to allow early career researchers to observe and interact with mission scientists. Nick will be participating in science lectures and working group meetings within the science team meeting. Congratulations, Nick!

Congratulations to PhD student, Burke Leonce, the winner in the STEM category of the Graduate Student Association (GSA) Research Showcase. Burke's poster title was "Fire influences structure-reactivity mechanisms of organic matter phototransformation in aqueous environments".

October of 2022 saw the welcome return of many of our outreach events. Geoscience graduate students and staff participated in Sic ’Em Science Day at the Mayborn Museum on Saturday, October 15th, allowing students to study physical properties of rocks and minerals. Participants included graduate students Jasmine Kidwell, Alix Fournier, undergraduate Allie North, and lab coordinator Sharon Browning.

Degrees of Science, a series hosted by KWTX Channel 10 Chief Meteorologist, Brady Taylor, talks with Baylor Geologists Dr. Kenny Befus & Dr. James Thompson, who recently returned from studying the Fagradalsfjall volcano in Iceland. As part of their research they were using drones to measure lava temperatures, in order to help model the flow of the lava.

We met up with Nick Wagner, a fourth-year Ph.D. Candidate in Geosciences, to talk with him about his ongoing research—Mars research. That's right, Nick's geoscience research is quite literally out of this world. One of Nick's primary goals is to continue developing a field called comparative planetology. Nick is able to interact with and accomplish cutting-edge planetary science research because of his network and resources at Baylor.

The Baylor Geosciences Department invites alumni and friends of the department to join faculty, staff, and students for our annual Homecoming Open House event. Join us on Friday, October 21st from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm in the Baylor Sciences Building, 4th floor, Clock Tower - Room E.401. We look forward to seeing you!

Congratulations to Ph.D. student, Alyssa Mills, who was awarded the John Mathers Nobel Scholar Award for her internship at the Goddard Space Flight center. This is a prestigious award given to only 8 interns/early career scientists.

The Department of Geosciences at Baylor University invites applications for PhD and MS students starting in August 2023.

A day-long session of scientific talks and research posters will highlight the contributions of Steven G. Driese to (paleo)pedology, critical zone science, clastic sedimentology, paleoclimatology, micromorphology, geoarchaeology and geochemistry from across the geologic time scale.

Dr. Peter James had an unplanned Baylor contingent at the SEG/AAPG IMAGE ‘22 conference in Houston with alumni Elisabeth Rau and Marilyn Wisler Hockstra.

The Martian Boulder Automatic Recognition System, MBARS

Ms. Zhao Wang has published her first paper in the journal Organic Geochemistry, a new technique she developed at Baylor. The paper is titled, “A streamlined method for pressurized extraction and fractionation of leaf lipids". Congratulations Zhao on your accomplishment!

Anna Lesko – PhD student, Baylor Geosciences, received an Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award from the National Association of Geoscience Teachers (NAGT) in June 2022. This award is based on performance in the classroom, student engagement and evaluation, collaboration with other graduate teaching assistants, and supervisor nomination.

Geosciences Ph.D. student, Nathan Wright, was awarded the Paleontological Research Institution’s (PRI) student travel award and the NSF/GSA Graduate Research Award to support his dissertation research.

Baylor University Ph.D. graduate student, Alix Fournier, received a GSA Graduate Student Research Grant to support her dissertation research. The goal of these grants is to support graduate students research projects in any field of the Geosciences.

Ben Sadler, Geosciences Ph.D. student, received a scholarship from the Fort Worth Geological Society in recognition of his research and scholastics.

Toluwaleke Ajayi, Geosciences Ph.D. student, was awarded the E. Russell Lloyd Memorial Scholarship from the West Texas Geological Society (WTGS) Scholarship Committee.

Des Thorn was awarded the Dallas Paleontological Society Frank Crane Memorial Scholarship for 2022 to support her MS thesis research, “Using Sycamore leaves to reconstruct ancient light environments”.

In 2017, Baylor parents James and Christina Price of Sarasota, Florida, established the Price Family Endowed Fund for Undergraduate Studies in Geology. As part of the Give Light campaign, the Prices’ gift creates a permanent and enduring source of support for undergraduate students in Baylor’s Department of Geosciences.

Approximately 90 teens ages 13-18 interacted with Baylor Geoscience personnel in our popular rock and mineral identification activity Saturday, April 9th from 6-9PM. Student groups were timed to allow for more personal interaction. Graduate student Jie Geng assisted lab coordinator Sharon Browning.

Congratulations to Dava Butler who submitted and was awarded a grant on the behalf of the Waco Mammoth National Monument for a 2022 National Park Foundation (NPF) Service Corps Grant for the project, Saving the Waco Mammoths from a Second Extinction: Protecting a Scientifically Invaluable Resource Through Erosion Mitigation.

Congratulations to Dr. Vince Cronin who has been selected as the 2022 Richard H. Jahns Distinguished Lecturer in Engineering Geology.

Congratulations to Debajeet Barman and Zhao Wang, recipients of the 2022 Summer Dissertation Fellowship.

Geology Sophomore Victoria Holman presenting her poster on fossil evidence of predation pressure on Eocene Mollusk communities from the Stone City Bluff Formation

Water Management Class participating in “Meet the Scientist” for World Water Day (for 2022 - Groundwater) at Mayborn Museum. Geosciences in action!

Dr. Bill Hockaday is a coauthor on a paper selected by the editors of PNAS as a finalist for the Cozarelli Prize recognizing science of the highest quality and originality published in PNAS. The paper is the runner up in Social and Behavioral Sciences (Class V).

Congratulations, Dr. Hockaday!
This position is the one that Dr. Steven Driese held before retiring. Dr. Driese was originally replaced by Dr. Sara Dolan but Dr. Dolan has moved to the Associate Dean for Professional Development replacing Beth Allison Barr who returned to the History Department as the James Vardaman Endowed Professor of History. Dr. Hockaday will now play an important role in graduate research for Baylor University.
Please congratulate Dr. Hockaday on his new appointment.
We are all proud of this reflection on the Geosciences!

Professor Vince Cronin has accepted an invitation to join the inaugural editorial board of the Journal of Geoethics and Social Geosciences (JGSG). JGSG is a new peer-reviewed open-access journal published in English online. According to the Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Silvia Peppoloni, JGSG will be "the first international journal fully dedicated to geoethics and the societal implications of geoscience knowledge, research, practice, education and communication."

In 2006, Dr. Steve Driese identified a need that prompted him to create the course GEO 5222 Grant Proposal Writing. In the years since, the course has provided students in Geoscience and other STEM disciplines with didactic and practical training in writing grant proposals. By the end of the class, students have drafted a research grant proposal, typically in NSF style, and the Geoscience Department began a tradition of awarding $500 to the student who produced the best proposal from each section of the course.

Alix Fournier, PhD Student, Geosciences, for her GEO 5222 research proposal entitled “Interrelation between late Quaternary geomorphic and hydrologic processes for the evolution of Monahans and Kermit dune fields, West Texas, USA," with Dr. Steve Forman in Geosciences as Ph.D. advisor.

In the Mayborn's new immersive exhibit, New Views of the Dust Bowl, you will experience what this historic time was like and learn why dust affects our food, our families, and our health.

Megan, a Baylor GEO and ENV alumnus, returned to Baylor on November 5, 2021, as Chief of Strategic Resources for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), Department of the Interior.

Congratulations to MS student Danielle Gygi for winning the paleontological Society student poster award at the Geological Society of America (GSA) annual meeting for her poster “Early Paleocene plant community and paleoclimate reconstruction of the Nacimiento Formation from the San Juan Basin, New Mexico”!

Brian R. Clark, Deputy Program Coordinator, Water Availability and Use Science Program - U.S.G.S.

Dr. Bill Hockaday recognized as one of AGU's outstanding reviewers of 2020.

Memorial Service Information for Dr. Scott James