IMPACT - August 2015

FEATURED

Celebrating Our Distinguished Past — Illuminating The Future

October 2015 marks the 50th Anniversary of the College of Geosciences at Texas A&M.

Friends and Colleagues,

Welcome to Impact, the inaugural newsletter issue from the College of Geosciences. In this, our 50th anniversary year, I cordially invite you, our friends, former students, and colleagues, to reconnect with the college and Texas A&M. There’s so much to tell you about! Impact will feature stories highlighting achievements, challenges and solutions that our faculty, students and staff meet each day. We plan to deliver Impact to your inbox every two months. For daily updates, be sure to check out the featured news at GeoNews.

Looking to the next 50 years, it is up to us, our faculty, our students and our graduates, to help solve society's grand challenges—global climate change, air and water quality, and the availability of adequate energy, water, and food supplies. We can also revel in the rewards of scientific discovery: the images beamed back from Pluto, the daily relay of information in real time throughout the Gulf of Mexico, and the new frontier of the deep biosphere beneath the seafloor.

We hope this newsletter will enlighten and entertain you and remind you that it is our mission in the College of Geosciences to make a difference in our world. Our College promotes a lifelong learning experience, a compulsion to know more, to push boundaries, to find solutions.

We would like to hear from you. Share your stories, where you are, what you have been doing since your time at Texas A&M. Also, please come for a visit to meet us—our bright students and distinguished faculty, I believe you will be very impressed.

Most importantly, please join us in October for our 50th anniversary celebration. We will celebrate a remarkable past and a very exciting future.

My best regards to each of you.

Kate Miller
Dean

COLLEGE NOTES

President Young visits the College of Geosciences

New president meets with college leadership and faculty.

Geosciences Students Explore the World

High-impact learning opportunities this spring and summer have taken students from the Great Wall in China to the grand mountain ranges of the American West and a Costa Rican cloud forest.

Oceanography Dedicates New Learning Facility

Named in honor of a revered professor, a unique learning center focuses on ocean observing, collaborative studies, and big data acquisition.

Mario Molina, Nobel Laureate, Has Special Tie with Atmospheric Sciences

The College of Geosciences hosted a special guest during summer commencement. Dr. Mario Molina, 1995 Nobel laureate for chemistry and 2013 Medal of Freedom recipient, was at Texas A&M to receive an honorary doctor of letters degree.

Pollen and Clouds: April flowers bring May showers?

Not many people have a cloud-making machine in their labs, but Sarah Brooks does. And it demonstrated the role pollen plays in cloud creation.

No-Win Waterscapes

A Texas A&M researcher measures water security in the Rio Grande Valley

Pacific Mystery: Coral Reefs Are Thriving, But How?

A College of Geosciences researcher and her colleagues have found healthy coral reefs in highly acidic ocean waters. "The reefs appear to be thriving, and we want to understand why," says Kathryn Shamberger, assistant professor of oceanography.

The Tie That Binds

A devotion to Texas A&M runs through four generations of the Morgan family.

Where Science Meets Society

A father’s focus on environmental law influences his daughter’s choice of career. The result is the George J. Miller Scholarship to support students in environmental programs.