The time since our last newsletter has been packed full. The past year has arguably been the first normal year at IU since the pandemic lockdown in 2020, and the first normal year since I started as department chair in January that year.

What is back to normal? We have run faculty job searches, hosted a full range of events, including our Crossroads conference, done field work around the world, and recruited the largest cohort of incoming graduate students in several years.
In this newsletter we celebrate an important milestone in our Atmospheric Science program, the graduation of Sam Smith, the first student to obtain a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences.

Our Atmospheric Science program got fully underway in 2015 when Cody Kirkpatrick was joined by new faculty hires Paul Staten (Sam’s advisor) and Chanh Kieu. The Atmospheric Science program now has a total of four tenure-track faculty (Ben Kravitz and Travis O’Brien joined the faculty in 2018 and 2019), a growing number of undergraduate majors, and a strong cohort of graduate students. Our Earth and Atmospheric programs are well integrated, and both with cognate faculty in Geography and the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. While undergraduates and MSc students have already graduated with IU degrees in Atmospheric Sciences, PhDs have the longest lead time. Sam’s degree is thus the ultimate benchmark of success for our new program – congratulations to Sam and Paul both on this achievement.

Our summer capstone field course at the Geological Field Station in Montana just started, the caravan having left Bloomington just days ago at the time I write this. Erika Elswick, after having stepped in as interim director, has graciously agreed to continue as the field station’s Executive Director. Erika has devoted her decades of knowledge and tremendous personal energy to the Field Station over the past year, including winter maintenance and admissions while we searched for a new resident manager in Montana and program coordinator in Bloomington. Both positions are now filled. Meagan Need joined our Bloomington staff as the IUGFS program coordinator and Jonathan Thompson started last week at the time of writing as the resident manager at the Field Station.

We lost several active alumni since our last newsletter. Among them was Shirley Pruett (1935-2022), a lifelong supporter of the department, who along with her husband Frank received BSc, MSc, and PhD degrees from our department and established our Frank D. and Shirley A. Pruett Undergraduate Scholarship. We also lost sedimentologist Allen Archer (1953-2022), a native Hoosier who got his undergraduate degree in Oregon but returned to IU and finished a PhD here in 1979. Jessica Elzea Kogel (1959-2023), who got her MSc and PhD in clay mineralogy with Hadyn Murray, who was Associate Director for Mining for the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety and who was President-elect of our departmental Alumni Advisory Board at the time of her death, lost a two-year battle with cancer.

As you will read in this newsletter, new geophysics faculty member Ginny Gong joined us this past January, and geochemist Julia Kelson and glaciologist David Lilien will join our faculty next January. With the other hires over the last few years, the department has grown back to the size we were prior to the wave of retirements over the last six years. You will also see that we had a very large number of graduate students who completed their degrees this year, who will be replaced this fall by the largest incoming class of new students in several years.

Our students and faculty have continued to make major accomplishments that you will also see featured in the following pages, and now that the world has adjusted to a post-pandemic norm, we have also been active again in many kinds of outreach events aimed at people of all ages.

Enjoy!

P. David Polly
Indiana University
14 June 2023