16 big and small, which help to make the office run smoother. I am now handling many more of the day to day duties; among those are answering questions from our current student population and prospective students, updating the textbook orders with the bookstore and monitoring enrollment numbers for each course at the beginning of the semester, all the while keeping up with the student records, and graduate applications for the next semester. I love interacting with the students and faculty at the School of Geology. We have a group of very bright and friendly graduate & undergraduate students who are great to work with. Our student employees this year, Macaley Guilfoyle & Margaret Flowers, are delightful and entertaining, which makes each day pass quickly and the completion of shared tasks much fun. My plans for graduate school changed last year due to a lack of funding. As a result, I decided to wait a year or two to be certain of the direction I want to go with my Master’s degree. It’s not completely out of the picture, but I believe it is better to evaluate the direction my career is taking before I make a final decision regarding the degree program I enroll in. My family is much the same as last year, Allison will be six at the end of February and Ellijah just turned eight this past December. They are both in school and making good grades, Allison in Kindergarten and Ellijah in second grade. My husband John is working for Koby Oilfield Services and I think he has finally found a company that fits well with his personality. One big change in our lives this year is that my daughter Allison, who has been a Type 1 Diabetic for a little over two years now, is going to be fitted with an insulin pump. This will require some retraining for all of us responsible for taking care of her, but the improvement in her health will be well worth the extra trouble. We are all looking forward to starting the process and we appreciate her endocrinologist who is making this possible. She was an advocate for Allison throughout this process and managed to work out every small detail for us. It has been and continues to be a pleasure to work with the faculty and other staff members of the Boone Pickens School of Geology. I look forward to the next year spent in their company and seeing the results of the many changes that are happening in our department. Mr. Tim Sickbert New faculty and increasing enrollment are giving me plenty of opportunities to add value to the department. In addition to setting up computers, installing software, assisting with assorted hardware, general maintenance and troubleshooting, I quartermaster some of the School of Geology’s field instruments and train students on their use. Beyond that, I keep busy installing and maintaining software and licenses, and assist with some equipment sourcing and purchasing. In my spare time, I continue to pursue my doctorate in geology by trying to deconstruct the kinematics of the Arbuckle Mountains. Meanwhile, enrollment has grown so large that the School of Geology’s own classrooms can no longer accommodate all the students in core classes such Mineralogy, Petrology, Structure, and Sedimentology and Stratigraphy. To help us seat all the students, the College of Arts and Sciences funded the School of Geology’s proposal to add new technology to a 99-seat classroom—NRC108—in the Noble Research Center. In that lecture hall, we will be adding a new 3D GeoWall, a new wallmounted SmartBoard touchscreen, and a petrographic microscope with attached video camera. The cost of the equipment is high enough that we had to put it out for bid, significantly slowing down the project. Nevertheless, we are now making steady progress on acquiring the equipment, and the Institution for Teaching and Learning Excellence (ITLE) at OSU is scheduled to install it this summer. Additionally, local seismicity is providing opportunities for research. Dr. Mohamed Abdelsalam is purchasing six research seismometers for his investigations into the structure and tectonics of the East Africa Rift System. Because the Africa campaign will be neither immediate nor permanent, I am looking for local sites at which to deploy the seismometers to provide data sets for both education and research. Mohamed has also purchased SARScape software to process satellite radar data to create InSAR interferograms that I will use to search for surface deformation related to the Oklahoma earthquakes. Ms. Sheri Orr Hello and nice to meet you! My name is Sheri M. Orr and I am the new Academic Counselor for the Boone Pickens School of Geology. I have a B.A. in Sociology (University of Oklahoma, 2006) and a Master's in Higher Educational Administration (University of NebraskaLincoln, 2008). I spent five as a Residence Hall Director at the University of Central Oklahoma, but moved to small-town Perkins, America to marry my husband, Matthew, in May 2013. Together, we have four fur-babies, so we get out of the house as often as weather permits to ride around on his Harley. In August, I was hired to serve as the primary academic advisor to our approximate 135 undergraduate Geology majors. With a steady influx of students majoring in Geology, the department wanted to make sure Dr. Puckette had time to actually teach, so they hired me to help lighten his load (a little – although he's still really busy!) Luckily for me, he has been a great mentor (to the students and to me) and his office is next door if I have questions! In addition to Geology, I also advise Chemistry and Physics majors, so I'm responsible for the academic planning and well-being of ~250 students. It has been really exciting to work with the different faculty and staff throughout the departments, but I have to admit, I am so happy to call Geology “home.” I've been busy these past five months getting to know our students, as well as getting to know our field. I have worked hard to build relationships with our faculty and learn about their specialties and the classes they are teaching. It is my goal to be able to offer the best academic, and personal, advice to students regarding their enrollment, course sequencing, graduation expectations, and career/graduate school planning and goals.
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