EOU GEOLOGY ALUMNI NEWS
Two EOU students enjoy sunset "on the rock" at Bandon, Oregon.
Geology is People! Please let us know
what you're doing! If you have photos you share, please send them, too! (jvantass@eou.edu)
Kate Asplund and David Samp were married on Saturday Septermber 19th at Fort Walla Walla Park in Walla Walla, Washington. It was overcast and there was a little light rain, but it was still a beautiful day for Kate, David, their daughter Emily, and their family and friends to celebrate! (9/20/09)
Kate's dad hugs Kate as the ceremony begins (left); David moves in for the kiss (center); and David and Emily dance during the father-daughter dance.
Eric Bergey and Carli Morris were married in a beautiful spot in the Columbia Gorge near Beacon Rock on September 12, 2009. Carli wore a beautiful gown that included the skirt from her mother's wedding dress and Eric looked handsome in his suit with a wild tie and calla lily boutonniere! It was a wonderful wedding! (9/15/09).
John Bishop and his wife, Helena, returned to Eastern Oregon from Arizonato visit John's family. John stopped by EOU to see the new science building and brought us some presents: A current meter, a noise meter, an air photo stereoscope, and other neat things. Thanks, John!
Judy (Brasure) Bowman is living in Richland, Washington. She writes: " I have traveled all over the world and got to see many places and as always have kept my interest in rocks alive." (12/29/08)
Misty (Davis) Bork and her husband Mark are the proud parents of a baby girl, Athena Nicole Bork. Athena was born on February 4th, 2008 in Baker City at 4:37 a.m. She weighed 6 lb. 14 oz. and was 21 1/4 in. long at birth. Athena wants to be a geologist when she grows up! (9/19/08)
Athena at one month (left) and seven months (right). Note the Tempskya root for scale!
Bryce Budlong has returned to Blue Mountain Water and is back driving around Eastern Oregon making deliveries. Bryce helped fund the 2005 Geology club trip to Colorado, the 2006 trip to Alaska, the 2007 trip to Utah, the 2008 trip to Hawaii, and the 2009 trip to Kelowna, B.C. . Thanks, Bryce! (5/6/09)
Candice Burnette completed her field camp on the glaciers near Juneau, Alaska, and is on her way to the University of Wyoming in Laramie to study geology (9/15/09).
Jenny Campbell returned to Eastern and is looking to continue her studies with primates in graduate school.
Kelly Clever writes: "I graduated in May of '05 with a BS in Interdisciplinary Science with am emphasis in Geo/Paleo. I bought a house a couple of years ago with my partner, Karyl. She is working on her Master`s in counseling. Given the recent laws passed here in South Dakota we are hoping to
move to Oregon after she graduates. I love the Black Hills (will be hard to leave them) and try to go rock hunting whenever the weather allows. I have lots of garnet, geodes, and ever some Fairburn Agates. I really enjoy going to the mines and looking through the tailings. I have found some precious beryl on these adventures...
Calvin Davis is still enjoying his job working at the Oregon State Crime Lab. He is looking forward to being transferred to their office in Pendleton by the start of the new year (9/22/09)
Wade deBraal is working in the computer field and wonders "whatever happened to Jerry Potter?"
Tyler Dretke is a senior geology major at OSU. He just finished field camp in Northern California and is in the middle of a sedimentology/stratigraphy course. He is the vice president of OSU's geology club! (10/122009)
Tammy Dunlavey just sent Jay a draft copy of her final Master's of Science thesis in Geology at the University of Buffalo, a very creative and mathematical study of 3-d shape changes in graptolites. She writes: "As you can see I don't study graptolites. I use them because they fit the criteria and are numerous in my lab. I study shape and micro structural geology. Theory yeah!!!! I should be starting my PhD in the spring if all goes well. My defense is on Monday Dec. 10, at 3:00. I made my own method. I would not advise that for a Master's project but I am glad I did it." (12/6/07)
Peter Farnam has started a carpentry firm with his son and is substitute teaching whenever possible. His daughter, Arie, and son, Nat, got married! Peter did a great job remodeling Jay and April's new house and their guest bathroom. He went on a trip to Vietnam. Peter’s wife, Julie, went to Czechoslovakia on a Fullbright scholarship. Peter is enjoying being a grandfather! (9/22/08)
Alyse Fischer sent us a great Christmas newsletter. She and Sterling are living in a small house in Joseph across the road from the ranch that Sterling works at. She writes "This year is the first that Sterling and I will have Christmas together in our own little yellow house. Often I find myself turning on the radio and dancing around the kitchen like my grandmother used to do. I am 21 years old now and a graduate of Eastern Oregon University. I have always wanted to be a teacher, I just never thought the day would actually come where I was formally recognized as one. I just finished my student teaching at Joseph Elementary and am going to miss my kindergarteners terribly." Alyse recently dropped by Eastern with her sister Lynna and Lynna's new baby. (5/12/09)
Lisa Fox finished her MTE program at Eastern.
Glen Fromwiller finished his Masters of Education. He got married and is teaching in La Grande!
Jamie Harmon and her husband Kelly Kline are living Montana, where Jamie is working as a librarian and Kelly is teaching math, physics, and astronomy at Carroll College. They have a new addition to their family: "
We just wanted to share the news that our new baby has arrived safe and sound! Timothy Gardner Cline joined our family on June 10th at 10:32 a.m.
Timothy is a cute little guy and we are thrilled to have him with us. He weighed 6 pounds, 15.3 ounces and was 18 inches tall.
Delivery was quick with sister Alma in attendance. Baby and Mother are recovering and our whole family has returned home."
Kelly wrote a beautiful piece on the birth of his new son for the Helena paper:
Exploring the Cosmos
By Kelly Cline - 06/23/09 helenair.com
Newborn, ancient son
On Wednesday, June 10, at 10:32 a.m., my wife and I welcomed our new son into the world. I cut his umbilical cord and listened as his lungs filled with air for the first time, and he gave out his first cries. Then I lifted up his wet, sticky body into my wife’s waiting arms.
My son is new, but as I look deeper, into his body, his tissues, his cells, DNA, atoms and particles, I see that he is an ancient person with a history going back for many billions of years.
My wife, my daughter and I have been listening to our little one’s heartbeat at the doctor’s office for many months now. The woosh-woosh-woosh sound of his heart has been in my thoughts every time I felt him kick from inside his mother. His heart, brain and muscles have all been active for more than seven months.
If I look smaller, I see his individual cells. My son is a city of cells — muscle cells, brain cells, skin cells, all working together to make his body function. His cells grew and divided for nine months, since the very first cell in his body was born.
Inside almost every cell is a nucleus containing my son’s DNA, the miraculous molecule of life. Each cell contains an identical copy of the DNA instructions, telling the cell how to function. His DNA is unique. No other human has his precise pattern of DNA, and that DNA formed for the first time nine long months ago. His DNA will determine his hair color and his eye color, and it will shape many of his talents and preferences as he grows and develops. But if we look deeper, we see that he is even older than this. His genes, the patterns encoded in his DNA came from my wife and me, and before that they came from his grandparents. How old are my son’s genes? Most have been passed down unchanged since the first humans walked the earth more than 100,000 years ago.
Some of my son’s genes are even more ancient, passed down from the first mammals and before that from the first animals, and before that from the very first cells, the first tiny organisms that appeared in the earth’s oceans almost four billion years ago. Every living thing, from the tallest pine to the tiniest bacteria, can be placed on one ancient family tree, all descended from one infant cell.
Looking deeper, the atoms of my son’s body are even older. His atoms were born in stars that shone out into the heavens more than five billion years ago. The cores of those stars were so hot that they squeezed together tiny hydrogen and helium atoms to make heavier atoms of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and iron. Then these stars exploded, spreading the heavier atoms out into the universe as gas and tiny grains of dust. Over time, gravity pulled clumps of this gas and dust together, forming our sun. Then in a swirling disc around our sun, gravity gathered these atoms into the newborn planet Earth.
The deeper I look into my sleeping son’s face, the older he is. Looking inside his atoms, I see his neutrons and protons, and these are the most ancient of all. They were born in the fires of the big bang, 14 billion years ago, when all of the universe, space and time itself was born into existence. Within the first three minutes of time, my sleeping child’s neutrons and protons were born.
This is the story of my son. This is his heritage. My son was first born 14 billion years ago, then in the cores of ancient stars, then in the oceans of the young earth, then in the genes of the first humans, and then today. Today I hold him for the first time, cradling him close as he quietly sleeps, completely content, knowing only that he is warm and loved. Happy birthday, my son.
Kelly Cline, Ph.D., is associate professor of astronomy and mathematics at Carroll College.
Kristin (Hanford) Pintok Moore contacted April via Facebook: " I am doing well, busy with 5 kids, I have 4 boys and one girl. Ages 17, 15, 13, almost 8, and 5 1/2. I m very blessed to be self employed at home. I have a small orthodontic lab with a few accounts. Works out great. I have stated a new business dealing with telecommunications, it has been a great adventure, with lots of traveling and helping people." (5/16/09)
Kim Haynes married a wonderful guy and is living in Provo, Utah, where her husband is finishing his Aviation Science degree at Utah Valley State College. She is teaching U.S. History at Utah Valley State.
Theresa Hill and Avory Abordonado were married on June 30, 2007 at Theresa's grandparents' ranch in Wingville, Oregon. It was a great wedding! The reception buffet featured octopus and other Hawaiian delicacies. (7/5/07)
Adam Isaacson finished his M.S. in teaching at EOU and has a job teaching in Afton, Wyoming. Good luck!
Clint Johnson was last heard from when he was teaching at the La Grande Middle School and helping coach Eastern's football team.
Dan Kalmbach is back in Nevada working for a mining company.
Rob Ledgerwood has completed his degree in surveying degree at OIT and is living on the Oregon coast. He and Jay are going to present a paper on the geology of the Keating Valley on October 18th at the Geological Society of America national meeting in Portland. (10/1/09)
April Leithner graduated from the MTE program at Eastern.
Greg Lemon just had his first book published. It is a biography of the Governor of Montana called Blue Man In A
Red State. You can see it and read the reviews on Greg's web site www.greglemon.net. He just was hired as editor in chief for the Big Sky Sun, a newspaper out of Bozeman, Mt.(8/1/08).
Patrick Lewis decided to put off Anthropology graduate school. He is working for the Boy Scouts in Portland, Oregon. His wife, Heather, just got a job as an associate scientist for a biochemical firm.
Jon Lundak stopped by to say hi and look at the new fossils from the Always Welcome Inn. He e-mailed later: "I miss being involved in geology. I'm going to be here at Whitman working for residence life for another year or two and then I'm off to OSU for the Student Services Grad School program. Let me know if anything exciting comes out of the dirt!" (9/24/07)
Bryce Mertz writes: "How are things in La Grande? I am still in Burns working for Harney County as the GIS Coordinator. I married Erron Hanley a 1999 Eastern Oregon graduate, in May of 2005 She is working as a 4th grade teacher in Burns. We
enjoy traveling to far away places. June 8, 2007 we are leaving for Thailand for two weeks. If you are ever in our area look us up. Hope all is well." (6/5/07)
Jacob Miller e-mails: " I spent this last summer up in the Interior of Alaska working in the exploration mining field and doing some placer gold geology. I logged a bunch of diamond drill core and did a bunch of other grassroots exploration sampling. I came back home to Juneau, AK in August and am now working for Hecla Greens Creek Mining Company. I am an Exploration Geologist - Core Logger. I am logging a bunch of different core for grassroots exploration, definition of ore body drilling and production drilling. It's really fun to be working for a mine that's in production and producing a number of metal products everyday. The mine deposit is a Volcanogenic Massive Sulphide deposit. It is producing Gold, Silver, Lead and Zinc. Very interesting rocks!!!!
I'm having a blast with the wide world of mine geology. It has given me many different opportunities to learn many new things. My mining experience has been so good to me that I decided to go back to school and get a masters degree. I am working on that while working full time. It will be in Mine Engineering. I have a few pictures from some of the places that I worked that you might enjoy or want to share with students." (11/4/09)
Drilling for gold on the Gil Project for Kinross Gold Corp near Fairbanks during the summer of 2009 (left).
High grade gold ore from the Kensington Mine near Juneau (right).
The Greens Creek Mine, where Jake is currently working (left).
Picture of an old gold placer gold mining dredge taken from a drill rig in Fairbanks (right). There are still about 20,000 ounces of gold around where the dredge currently sits.
Story Miller e-mails from Dutch Harbor, Alaska: "I've been sooo busy galavanting around the US and now I'm swamped with teaching, coaching volleyball, swimming on the adult swim team, revamping the district science curriculum, taking a grad class online, coordinating pep-band and trying to have a social life! I'm teaching 7th grade math (a regular class and an advanced one) and 7/8 physical science this year (last year I taught life science). They might have me teach chemistry next year in addition to my regular classes! I'm planning a trip to Costa Rica over spring break and am heading to Kenya to teach CPR and first aid in the summer with Montana State's Engineers Without Borders program!!! I'm sorry I have to cut this short but it's late and I need to get at least four hours of sleep before school tomorrow!" (9/22/09)
A volcano in the Aleutian Islands (photo by Story Miller)
Karen Pease came to Avory and Theresa's wedding. She is teaching in Milton-Freewater and her husband, who is from Jamaica (by way of New Jersey), is working for an electronics firm in Walla Walla. Their daughter loves going to school in Milton-Freewater. (7/5/07)
Mark Peterson is teaching 2nd grade in California.
Jerry Potter was last seen working for a mining company in Nevada.
Timothy Schwehr likes teaching high school in Yuma, Arizona, and is having a lot of fun! Tim wants to go on to become a vice principal.
Sarah Smith writes: "Hi Jay, I spent September 6th and 7th in Denver, and made a visit to Rocky Mountain National Park. It was a surprise - my boyfriend Ed lives there, and because I studied geology (and I guess talk about it alot!) he thought I'd like it. What a keeper, eh? ) I loved it! It was beautiful, the photos don't do it justice. When we drove through Estes Park, we even got to see the part of the Highland Games where they try to hit an inflatable 'Nessy' in the lake with a cannon ball. All kinds of experiences and things to see."(9/22/08)
Sarah at Rocky Mountain National Park (left); Sarah's "kids" Amos (left) and Bruno (right) hit the trail at the Oregon Trail Visitors Center in Baker City.
Lorna Spain has been traveling around the Pacific Northwest. The carillon that she planned for her senior thesis is making beautiful music on-campus and a clock tower is in the works. She loves her grandkids! She is still doing a great job as president of the Grand Ronde Symphony Orchestra Association.
Sandra Staab is back working in La Grande!
Tanager Stanhope is teaching here in Oregon.
Klista Starner is the mother of a beautiful baby girl! (7/23/08).
Maggie Swanger got married to an anthropologist who is doing research in Mesa Verde, Colorado. She writes: Greetings from the Southwest. My husband, Michael, and I have been having fun here Cortez, Colorado. for the past two years. The country is so beautiful and we never tire of hopping over to Southern Utah to backpack through the canyons or canoe the Green River. I see you forced your geology students into going to Puerto Vallarta. That must have been rough! Enjoyable as bumming around at the nursery and coffee shop has been, I feel that I'm ready to go back to school and perhaps get a "real job." She is now working as a librarian.
Jayne Leigh Thomas completed her MS in Resource Management at Central Washington University. She writes, from Scotland: “I'm doing really well. I am currently attending the University of Edinburgh in Scotland for my Ph.D. I should probably back up a little and tell you about my summer-it was fascinating! After graduation I was the teaching assistant on the Wenas Creek Mammoth excavation which is actually less than 3 miles from my house in Selah, Washington. The site was first discovered in February 2005 when a member of a construction crew cutting a new road for the landowner ran over the left humerus with the backhoe. He immediately stopped and collected what he could and delivered the bone fragments to Central Washington University (there are
still rumors that the bones made several trips to the local taverns with the
construction guys, so we are unaware if we have all of the pieces that were
originally recovered). I was part of an initial research team that returned to the site in May of 2005 and we uncovered the distal end of the humerus that had been hit in February.
As you know, we had our first field season summer of 2005 where we recovered the right humerus of the Mammoth in addition to a metacarpal and hundreds of bone fragments. We returned this summer and during the course of our eight-week field school uncovered two cervical vertebrae (one being the axis), a thoracic vertebra, a scapula, and several ribs of the mammoth. One large surprise from this summer is that located less than 10 cm away from the mammoth vertebrae at the same stratigraphic layer was the metapodial of a prehistoric bison. There are three main layers at the site, the upper layer being a grey loess, followed by a colluvial layer and then an alluvial layer on the bottom, which may have been from Wenas Creek which is 70 feet below the site to the north.
Although not completely certain, our mammoth has been determined to be a Columbian mammoth. We are unaware of the sex of the mammoth, but know that it was over 12 years old when it died. We also uncovered a chipped stone artifact made of chert 5 cm above the mammoth and bison bones. There has not been a direct correlation made between the bones and the artifact, but it changed our site from being strictly paleontological to archaeological.
During spring quarter, I was accepted into the University
of Edinburgh's Ph.D.
program. I am currently working in the stable isotope analysis lab, extracting collagen from human remains that wil be used for radiocarbon and stable isotope analyses. My dissertation will focus on forensic osteoarchaeology in Slovenia.
I have been here for about a month and absolutely love it.
Lauri Russell Waisanen went to Slovenia and visited Postojnska jama, the largest cave in this classic karst area. The cave network has 10 km of passages! He is now back EOU to finishing up his PPE degree. His plan is to finish up the Geography part of his Liberal Studies Degree and then head to graduate school for a masters degree in Urban Planning and/or Management." He had a horrific three day flight to Hawaii in June, but finally managed to get there and meet up with the Geology Club. He made it to the meeting in Kelowna, B.C. on time. He's back at EOU again! (10/1/09)
Russ enjoying the Hawaiian sun!
Wayne Whitley is teaching school in Boardman, Oregon. Basalt, basalt everywhere (plus some Missoula flood erratics)! Wayne and his wife, April, just had baby boy, Brett Moses Whitley. Wayne writes: "It's a boy! "Beamer" was born at 16:55 on April 3, 2008 in Good Shepherd Hospital in Hermiston, Oregon. He weighed 6 lbs. 11 oz. and was 19.5" long at birth. April had to have a c-section because the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby's head, but both baby and mother are healthy, doing fine, and hungry at the moment!" (4/03/08)
Wayne and his new baby Brett Moses "Beamer" Whitley.
Mike Woydziak is working for an environmental geology consulting firm in Boise, Idaho. He and his wife just had a baby!