News & Events
Geology News
Geology Department welcomes Dr. Anne Fetrow as new faculty member
The Geology Department welcomed a new Sedimentary Geology faculty member for the 2025-26 academic year. Assistant Professor Anne Fetrow joins the ranks after the retirement of Professor Paul Myrow.
Image: Dr. Anne Fetrow. Photo by Fetrow.
Story on Victoria Levi '27, who was inspired by the GY140: Introduction to Earth Systems class
Victoria Levi '27 is using both her English Literature major and Environmental Studies minor skills this summer while working on legislation about dam-removal at American Rivers, a non-profit environmental organization that works to protect and restore rivers.
"Last year, I took Introduction to Earth Systems with Professor Grambling where my final project was titled 'Victoria's Favorite Whitewater Kayaking Lines on the Potomac River Through a Geological Lens,' and I got to research the geology of my home river where I grew up kayaking," Levi says.
Read the full story here!
Image: Victoria Levi '27 and Katie Schmidt, American Rivers National Dam Removal Program Associate Director, pictured at a site-visit to the Bloede-Dam Removal site on the Patabsco River in Maryland. Photo by Levi.
CC Awarded with a Research College and University (RCU) Designation
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the American Council on Education (ACE) have recognized Colorado College with a Research College and University (RCU) Designation. The RCU designation highlights research contributions from institutions historically not recognized for their research activity. Unlike the traditional R1 and R2 classifications, RCU status acknowledges colleges and universities that invest significantly in research, even if they do not offer many or any doctoral degrees. CC is one of 36 undergraduate liberal arts colleges awarded this designation.
Read the full story here!
Image: Dr. Michelle Gevedon helping undergraduate student researcher, Anders Swanson '25, core garnet minerals for isotopic analyses. Photo by Elizabeth Erickson.
Past News
Geo Student Intern at AMNH
Geology Students Intern at American Museum of Natural History
Published 30 August 2024
Makena R. Hatch ’26, Elizabeth Spradlin ’27, Corra Lewis ’27, and Mac Schwartz ’27 were participants in the Noblett-Witter Family Internship Program, which was generously established by Bill Witter ’87. These four CC students spent their summer in the heart of New York City, interning at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), where they experienced a hands-on, professional geology environment.
The CC Geology Department partners with companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations, such as the American Museum of Natural History, to host internships for Geology students from CC. The Witter Family Fund provides the interns with weekly stipends and covers the cost of travel to and from the internship location. The aim of the Internship Program is for students to gain skills and experience by doing hands-on work and learning fundamental methods that they may use in potential careers. Other host organizations for the Noblett-Witter Family Internship Program have included the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Los Alamos National Laboratories, Harthree Partners, and Neptune and Company.
Read the full story here!
Image: Elizabeth Spradlin ’27, Corra Lewis ’27, and Makena R. Hatch ’26 stand in the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda before opening during their internship at the American Museum of Natural History in August 2024. Photo by Hatch.
Keck Research Awarded to Schanz & Gevedon
NSF Grant Expands Opportunities for Geology Research at CC
Published 24 July 2024
Geology professors, Dr. Sarah Schanz and Dr. Michelle Gevedon, spent the past five weeks leading a summer research opportunity for ten rising sophomores from institutions around the country exploring how geology impacts climate change.
They were awarded over $92,000 in funding from the Keck Geology Consortium and the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates program to run their project, “Investigating Linkages Between Geologic Histories, Eolian Dust Production, and Climate Change.” They also offered a peer mentor role to Lucy Rogers ’25, a Geology major and Dance minor, who participated in a previous Keck Geology NSF project before her sophomore year.
Read the full story here!
Image: Dr. Michelle Gevedon, Assistant Professor of Geology, teaches a summer geology course, funded by the National Science Foundation, at Baca Campus in Crestone, CO. Photo by Jamie Cotten.
Siddoway Polar Research
CC is Breaking Polar Research Barriers
Published 3 November 2023
Dr. Christine Siddoway, her students, and CC alumni have joined in developing a ground-breaking geospatial resource for Antarctic research, opening up new ways to understand the frozen continent. They, and an international team coordinated by GNS Science, Aotearoa-New Zealand, created GeoMAP Antarctica to be the first detailed digital database that collates all the existing geological data of Antarctica.
Siddoway has long worked on the bedrock geology of Antarctica, involving CC Geology majors and collaborating with international colleagues. Lately, this work culminated in the publication of Antarctic GeoMAP in Nature Data Science. The groundbreaking geospatial resource is the first interactive, queriable, online GIS for the Antarctic continent. GeoMAP serves geologists, glaciologists, climate scientists, and biologists whose work examines the interrelationships between the ice sheet and the bedrock. More than 20 CC geology majors participated in the decade of work leading up to the GeoMap release. Four CC alums are co-authors, with Sam Elkind ’16 having a leading role. Coauthors Elkind and Lexie Millikin ’17 had Witter Family Fund internships that were important to the success of the international collaboration on the Antarctic dataset.
Read the full story here!
Image: Dr. Christine Siddoway in Antarctica. Photo by Kevin Emery.
Gevedon Rodingites Research Grant
Geology Professor Awarded National Science Foundation Grant
Published 14 November 2022
Dr. Michelle Gevedon, assistant professor of geology, was recently awarded a $94,017 grant by the National Science Foundation as part of her research project on rodingites in New Zealand.
Read the full story here!
Image: Dr. Michelle Gevedon. Photo by Gevedon.
Schanz Rivers Research Grant
Professor Sarah Schanz Receives $463,586 Grant to Study Meandering Bedrock Rivers
Published 6 August 2021
Colorado College Assistant Professor of Geology Sarah Schanz has been awarded a $463,586 grant from the National Science Foundation for her project, “Collaborative Research: Climatic and Geologic Controls on the Threshold Conditions for Bedrock Single- and Multi-thread Channels.” Working with Brian Yanites at Indiana University Bloomington, the three-year project will explore the phenomena of meandering bedrock rivers — those whose banks and bed are solid rock rather than gravel and sand — in order to study how they carve valleys and transport nutrients and sediment. The goal is to understand what geologic and climatic conditions are favorable for forming wide, habitat-rich valleys versus narrow, incised gorges.
Read the full story here!
Image: Dr. Sarah Schanz. Photo by Schanz.
Siddoway Research on BBC
Christine Siddoway’s Antarctica Research Highlighted by BBC
Published 3 May 2021
BBC story, “Climate change: A small green rock's warning about our future,” features a discovery by Colorado College Professor of Geology Christine Siddoway, presented last week at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly.
Read the full story here!
Siddoway Named A CC Faces of Innovation
Using Antarctica's Geology to Forecast Future Sea Level Rise
Published 3 January 2021
Peering into the deep past of geologic time could help scientists better forecast changes ahead for earth's troubled future.
Geology Professor Christine Siddoway is committed to helping shed light on those changes, and to bringing along the next generation of scientists.
Read the full feature here!
Image: Dr. Christine Siddoway working at the core table in the shipboard laboratory of the drillship Joides Resolution. Photo by Siddoway.
Students Attend GSA Conference
Dr. Solomon Seyum's Students Attend the Geological Society of America Conference
Published 6 November 2020
The Riley Scholars-in-Residence Program is proud to announce Dr. Solomon Seyum, postdoctoral Riley Scholar-in-Residence in Geology, extended his collaborative research with Charlie Robinson (Geology '21) and Cade Quigley (Geology '22) to include the students' attendance at the "Teaching Quantitative Structural Geology" workshop hosted by Professors Emeriti David D. Pollard (Dr. Seyum's Ph.D. advisor) and Stephen J. Martel during the Geological Society of America conference last month.
Read the full story here!
Image: Dr. Solomon Seyum, Riley Scholars-in-Residence postdoc at Colorado College Geology Department. Photo by Seyum.
Siddoway Antarctica Research Grant
Christine Siddoway Co-recipient of $317,032 Antarctica Research Grant
Published 2 June 2020
Colorado College Professor of Geology Christine Siddoway has been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to study the cores drilled while she was a shipboard scientist on the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) expedition in the Amundsen Sea, Antarctica.
Read the full story here!
Image: Dr. Christine Siddoway. Photo by Siddoway.
Geology Students Publish in Geosciences
Aaron Farquhar ’18, Robin Hilderman ’20 Publish in Geosciences
Published 21 April 2020
Research conducted on a volcano in New Zealand by Aaron Farquhar '18 and Robin Hilderman '20 has been published in the journal Geosciences.
Farquhar and Hilderman conducted the research as part of their study abroad program through the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Professor Ben Kennedy of the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Canterbury is the first of the 10 authors on the paper; Farquhar is second and Hilderman is third.
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Image: Field photo of Farquhar '18 and Hilderman '20 at Whakaari/White Island, New Zealand's most active volcano. Photo by Hilderman.
CC Alumni Fossil Discovery
Three CC Alumni Involved in Extraordinary Fossil Discovery
Published 24 October 2019
Three Colorado College alumni - one of whom won CC's Spirit of Adventure Award in 2017 - are part of a team that announced the discovery near Colorado Springs of a remarkable collection of fossils that reveal in striking detail how the world and life recovered after the catastrophic asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
Ian Miller '99, curator of paleobotany and director of earth and space sciences at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Gussie Maccracken '11, a paleontology Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Entomology at the University of Maryland College Park, and Benjamin Lloyd '19, a recent Colorado College graduate and currently the paraprofessional in CC's Department of Geology, were involved in the research and writing of the article published in the Oct. 24 issue of Science magazine.
Read the full story here!
Image: Ben Lloyd '19 working the the NOVA crew in the field. Photo by Lloyd.