Northern Arizona University

Kyle Eastman is a sophomore Geology (and eventual Geochemistry) major. He is also the founder and past president of the NAU Geology Club. The NAU Geology Club meets every Wednesday at 5:30 to plan field trips and other events. Kyle has been an avid mineral collector and lapidary enthusiast for many years, and has been collecting all over Arizona and the western US. His hobbies (besides mineral collecting) include rock climbing and mountain biking. Kyle also works as a geology tutor at the Learning Assistance Center in the Field House.

Tim Murray is an undergraduate geology major from West Virginia. He is the current NAU Geology Club president, and also the lab assistant in the Geology computer lab. He chose Flagstaff for school because the strong outdoor environment reminded him of West Virginia while giving him an opportunity to see the southwest. After taking Physical Geology there was no longer any doubt what he wanted to do. When Tim’s not busy with school work he enjoys getting outdoors. Tim’s advice to new undergraduates would be to find other people with similar interests in geology and spend as much time as possible with them. According to Tim, you’ll find you have to do far less studying and memorizing if you put yourself in that environment.

Amanda Millhouse is a first year grad student from Grand Blanc, Michigan. She received her B.A. from Albion College, a small liberal arts school in MI, where she spent three years doing research on emydid turtles from the Eocene of Wyoming. This included many hours putting together numerous turtle shells and two summers out in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming collecting more specimens. Amanda is studying vertebrate paleontology. She will be working with Dave Elliott and Ron Blakey looking at the vertebrate trackways in the Coconino Sandstone in the Grand Canyon. She’s going to do a paleo/sedimentology study of the tracks, focusing on how/why they formed where they did and what the tracks themselves say about the animals that made them. Amanda’s advice to her fellow grad students is to sign up for vert paleo next spring! “It'll be fun! Undergrads, you should take the class too if you're interested. The more the merrier!”

As a young Boy Scout, graduate student Caleb Schiff was both challenged and intrigued by nature and specifically mountain environments. Pursuing geology was originally an excuse for Caleb to get outside. However, he came to enjoy the intellectual challenges and sense of discovery that accompany studying Earth processes. His interest in Quaternary climate change began at CU-Boulder and was fueled by field experiences in arctic Norway. Caleb’s thesis here at NAU focuses on Holocene climate change in south Alaska. He is investigating a relatively new proxy to climate studies, the oxygen-isotope composition of lake diatoms. Studying climate change in the North Pacific presents many challenges, largely because large-scale patterns of atmospheric circulation are not well understood. Caleb finds it exciting to be making discoveries about past climate that are largely unknown. Besides thinking that Flagstaff’s great academically, Caleb’s come to love the great trail access, climate, and casual lifestyle of Flagstaff. When not working on his thesis, Caleb finds himself on the local trails, running or biking.