17 I have had the opportunity to implement a few changes that will hopefully help increase student success and improve overall graduation/retention rates. With Dr. Estella Atekwana and Dr. Puckette's input, I recently created a Four-Year Planning Guide to give to students during their first semester as a Geology major and to prospective students. On the guide is an outline of recommended course sequencing, required prerequisites for Geology courses, as well as suggested courses for select sub-disciplines. I hope to begin utilizing the guide this spring. In October, per my recommendation, the faculty voted to offer two of our “bottleneck” courses twice a year (fall & spring) to help provide a more efficient path to graduation. Starting next fall, we will offer Historical Geology and Mineralogy (both prerequisites for other, upper-division Geology courses) two times a year. Our goal is to allow transfer students to take more Geology in their first few semesters, as well as to ensure students aren't too far behind in their course sequencing. We implemented another major change to the department this fall that we hope will increase our students' retention rates and GPAs. We partnered with the Registrar's Office to electronically enforce listed prerequisites for Geology courses; this meant students were prohibited from enrolling in courses for which they were not sufficiently prepared. By monitoring enrollment and requiring successful completion of prerequisites (usually a grade of C or better), students should be better prepared for and earn better grades in their classes. By next year's newsletter, I hope to be able to brag about our rising caliber of students, increasing number of graduates, and how little I bothered Dr. Puckette with advising/Geology questions, but until then... Go Pokes!! SPOTLIGHT ON FACULTY RESEARCH BPSoG PUBLICATIONS 2013 (OSU affiliation are bolded, *denotes OSU students authors) 1. Abdel Aal, G.Z. and Atekwana E.A., 2013, Spectral induced polarization (SIP) response of biodegraded oil in porous media: Geophysical Journal International doi: 10.1093/gji/ggt416. 2. *Abongwa P.T., Atekwana, E.A., 2013, Assessing the temporal evolution of dissolved inorganic carbon in waters exposed to atmospheric CO2(g): A laboratory approach. Journal of Hydrology 505, 250-265. 3. *Akoko E., Atekwana E.A., Cruse A.M., Molwalefhe L. Masamba W.R.L., 2013. River-wetland interaction and carbon cycling in a semi-arid riverine system: The Okavango Delta, Botswana. Biogeochemistry 114, 359-380, DOI:10.1007/s10533-012-9817-x. 4. Asmus, J.J. and Grammer G.M. 2013, Characterization of deep-water carbonate turbidites and mass transport deposits (MTDs) utilizing high-resolution electrical borehole image logs: Late Leonardian (E. Permian) Upper Bone Spring Limestone, Delaware Basin, Southeast New Mexico and West Texas, Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies Transactions, v. 63, p. 27-65. 5. *Bagley E. and Puckette J.2013, Lithofacies, geochemical trends, and reservoir potential, Thirteen Finger Limestone, Hugoton Embayment: Mid-Continent Core Workshop, from source to reservoir to seal, Kansas Geological Survey/Kansas Geological Society, p. 15-26. 6. Barnes, D., Harrison W.B. III, Grammer G.M. Asmus J., 2013, CO2/EOR and Geological Carbon Storage Resource Potential in the Niagaran Pinnacle Reef Trend, Lower Michigan, USA, GHGT, Energy Procedia v. 37, p. 6786-6799. 7. Barrick, J.E., Lambert, L.L., Heckel, P.H., Roscoe, S.; and Boardman, D.R., II, 2013, Midcontinent Pennsylvanian Conodont Zonation: Stratigraphy, Volume 10, p. 55-72. 8. Boardman, D.R., II, and Work, D.M., 2013, Pennsylvanian (Desmoinesian-Virgilian) Ammonoid Zonation for Midcontinent North America: Stratigraphy, Volume 10, p. 105-116. 9. Boardman, D.R., Thompson, T.L., Godwin, C., Wilhite, B.W., and Morris, B.T., 2013, High-Resolution Conodont Zonation for Kinderhookian (Middle Tournaisian) and Osagean (Upper Tournaisian-Lower Visean) Strata of the Estern Edge of the Ozark Plateau, North America, Shale Shaker, volume 64, p. 98-151. 10. Boardman, D.R., Watney, W.L., Victorine, J., Doveton, J., and Thompson, T., 2013, Gulf Oil P & M 12 Core Near-Surface Analog to the Mississippian Tripolitic Petroleum Reservoirs in Southern Kansas: Mid-Continent Core Workshop: From Source to Reservoir to Seal, Mid-Continent Section AAPG, Wichita, KS October 13, 2013, p. 191-212. 11. Buta, R.J., Pashin, J. C., Minter, N.J., and Kopaska-Merkel, D.C., 2013, A Westphalian megatracksite in Walker County, Alabama, in Lucas, S. G., Barrick, J. E., Davydov, V., DiMichele, W., Krainer, K., Nelson, J., and Schneider, J. W., eds., CarboniferousPermian Transition: New Mexico Museum of Natural History Bulletin 60, p. 42-56. 12. Coor, J.L., Donoghue, J.F., 2013, Wallace, T., Wang, Y., and Elsner, J.B., in revision, Detecting a storm history signature in coastal lake sediments, northern Gulf of Mexico coast: Quaternary Research. 13. Das, O., Wang, Y., Donoghue, J.F., Xu,X., Coor, J.L., Elsner, J., and Xu, Y., 2013, Reconstruction of paleostorms and paleoenvironment using geochemical proxies archived in sediments of two coastal lakes in northwest Florida: Quaternary Science Reviews, v. 68, p. 142-153. 14. Fritz, H., Abdelsalam, M.G., Ali, K.A., Bingen, K.A., Collins, A.S., Fowler, A.R., Ghebreab, W., Hauzenberger, C.A., Johnson, P.R., Kusky, T.M., Macey, P., Muhongo, S., Stern, R.J., and Viola, G., 2013. Orogeny style in the East African Orogen: A review of the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian tectonic evolution. Journal of African Earth Sciences. 86, 65-106. 15. Galbraith, E. D., Kienast, M. and the NICOPP Working Group, 2013, The acceleration of oceanic denitrification during deglacial warming. Nature Geoscience (6), 579–584; doi: 10.1038/ngeo1832.
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