Alum Chris Maples will be the next president of the Geological Society of America Foundation.
Chris is a paleontologist and sedimentologist who got both a Masters and PhD at IU in 1985. In his masters thesis he described one of the only insect fossils from the famous(ish) Hindostan Whetstone Beds of Indiana (grad students who went on our introductory field trip have been to the quarry where it was found) and his PhD was on the paleontology, paleoecology, and depositional setting of the Dugger Formation, both of which are parts of the Pennsylvanian sequence of Indiana. Later he was on our faculty and served as department chair before setting off on a career that has included being president or chancellor of three universities, most recently Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon. He remains a big fan of the department and of the IU Paleontology Collection.
The College of Arts