10 for a trip to the Guadalupe Mountains – another successful trip to world class outcrops that I know many of you have also visited during your career. My group has a few newcomers that joined us in the Fall. Mckensie Mitsdarffer (MS student) joins us from Texas A&M and will be working on the Wolfcamp in the Permian Basin. Maria Reistroffer (MS student) did her undergraduate work at the University of Texas at Austin – she will be working on the Bakken in the Williston Basin. Alejandra Santiago Torres (MS student), University of Puerto Rico, is working on Silurian-‐aged carbonate slope deposits in Indiana, and Sabrina Halli, a Fulbright scholar here to work on a MS, is working with Jay and myself on the diagenesis of Mississippian rocks in Arkansas. Our two Egyptian colleagues, Yasser Salama (post- ‐doc from Beni Suef University) and Ahmed El Belasy (PhD student from Mansoura University) both returned home this year – we will miss them as both contributed a lot to the technical expertise and collegiality of our group. PhD students Ibukun Bode and Yulun Wang will be finishing up their studies this year, as will MS students C.J. Appelseth, Elizabeth Elium and Jim Karsten. Looks like a very exciting year with the wrap up of some superb student research and the beginnings of some very interesting new projects. As always, we wish all of you the best for the new year, and invite you to stop by and see what we are doing any time you are in Stillwater. Mickey and Jay Gregg standing by the Cross of St. Kevin, Glendalough, Ireland. Dr. Jay Gregg Professor; V. Brown Monnett Chair of Petroleum Geology; Carbonate Petrology, Sedimentology and Sedimentary Greetings to all of the alumni and friends of the BPSoG! This year was one of advising graduate students, finishing up projects, and teaching. I am now advising four graduate students: Jordan Ray, who is finishing up a thesis on the Silurian Hunton Group dolomites here in Oklahoma. Phil Bailey is working on the Lower Ordovician Arbuckle Group dolomites, also in Oklahoma. Gina Dunseith is working on hydrothermal dolomites in the Middle Ordovician Trenton/Black River formations in the Michigan Basin. Gina Lukoczki is working on the Triassic dolomites of southwestern Hungary. Gina L. is doing some very sophisticated crystallographic work on her dolomites and has submitted a successful proposal to do synchrotron diffraction work at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. Several papers with graduate students are coming out in the upcoming AAPG Special Publication 116 on the Mississippian of the Mid-‐Continent are now on line on DataPages. These include two papers with newly minted Ph.D. Sahar Mohammadi. I am wrapping up what probably will be my last paper on the Mississippian of Ireland. This work is with colleagues at the University of Missouri and in Ireland. With this paper I will conclude twenty-‐two years of research on the geology of the Emerald Isle. There is no better place to do field work than Ireland. If you don't mind a bit of rain there is nothing on the island that will bite you, sting you, or give you a rash and there is always a friendly pub and frothy pint at the end of the day! I have been teaching the usual courses and developing a new course. I taught Evolution of the Earth (Historical Geology) last Spring Semester and again on-‐line in the Fall Semester (although Gina Lukoczki did most of the heavy lifting). Advanced Carbonates also was taught in the Fall Semester and included a field trip to the Guadalupe Mountains of west Texas and southeastern New Mexico. This year I am developing a new course with Brendan Hanger titled “Exploring Earth: An introduction to Geology”. This will replace the old “Geology and Human Affairs” course. The main difference will be that the new course will be three credits with lab instead of four credits. It also will place more emphasis on climate change- ‐ paleoclimatology and have a section on planetary geology. This course will be offered next Fall. I had a month long sojourn to Europe last summer. On July 10 I flew to London to meet up with Gina Lukoczki who was running clumped isotope analyses on her samples in Cedric John’s laboratory at Imperial College. While there I took a side trip to Oxford University to meet up with a colleague, Cathy Hollis. We had lunch in a snug at the Eagle and Child Pub on St. Giles’ Street. Famously, this was the meeting place of the “Inklings” early in the 20th century. This small group of Oxfordites included C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. They discussed literature, philosophy, and theology. Cathy and I discussed dolomite. After London I flew to Budapest to meet up with Gina again along with Professors János Haas and Tamás Budai and several days inspecting Gina’s dissertation field area in the Mecsek Mountains and Villány Hills of southwestern Hungary. We stayed in Pécs, a beautiful university town at the southern edge of the Mecsek Mountains. In addition to Triassic (and some Jurassic) carbonates, this is Hungary’s wine country, which is even more of a reason for a field trip there. On returning to Budapest, Gina gave me a walking tour of her hometown of Pest, on the left bank of the Danube River (Buda is on the right bank). After a week in Hungary I flew on to Dublin, to meet Mickey and spend a few days there and then about ten days traveling west to a remote B&B on the north coast of County Mayo for a few days. Then, on to County Donegal and travel
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