Dear Geosciences Alumni and friends,
It has been a couple of years since you have received a Geosciences Newsletter, but one is in preparation for distribution next summer. Please send us any recent information about you and your family that you would like to share. We would like for you to update your mailing information so that you can receive a paper copy, if you wish. The entire newsletter will be posted on the Departmental web site to read and download.
Texas Tech and the Department of Geosciences are undergoing rapid changes and we will share these with you in the newsletter. Some highlights are:
Total enrollment at Texas Tech has risen to 28,500 from 23,000 over the past few years. New buildings are appearing across the campus, including a new Experimental Sciences Building just north of the Science Building. The University will add 100 new faculty positions over the next two years, including new positions in Geosciences.
Our freshman geology and atmospheric science classes are bursting at the seams. Moreover, the number of undergraduate Geoscience majors has risen from fewer than 40 to about 80, and seems to be increasing every week. The increase in enrollment started well before oil prices began to rise and we are anxiously waiting to see what will happen over the next few years. We have seen an especially strong increase in interest in geophysics and atmospheric science at the undergraduate level.
The graduate programs in geology, geophysics, and atmospheric science remain robust. Even so, this fall we had too few graduate students to satisfy the recruiting needs of petroleum companies for geology/geophysics interns and permanent hires.
This year, Dr. Chris Weiss (Ph.D. Oklahoma) joined the atmospheric science program in Geosciences. Dr. Weiss has research interests in dry lines, tornadoes, and other storm phenomena. He will soon be joined by new hires; we have on-going searches for faculty with specialties in:
Sedimentary geology in support of petroleum geology
Mesoscale meteorology in support of the wind energy program
GIS/remote sensing to support the increasing demands for these skills
The declining revenues from the State of Texas, combined with the rapid growth of the University and the Department means that the financial resources available for teaching and student and faculty research remain limited. This is in spite of significant increases in funding from grants and earnings from endowments. Therefore, we sincerely thank those of you who have so generously donated money and given endowments to the Department – it is difficult to imagine how we could manage without these addition funds for scholarships, travel and equipment. Still, there is a continuing need for financial assistance, especially in areas of student travel and research support.
In particularly, we wish to increase the number of field trips for our students. About 50 eager students, from freshman to graduate level, participated in a Labor Day trip this fall to northern New Mexico. The Department subsidized the cost of vehicles and gas for the fall trip, but this expenditure will limit the scope of field trips in the spring. We are reluctant to ask the students, with their increasing tuition bills, to support the full cost of field trips, yet it is imperative that they gain as much field experience as possible. Thus, we wish to start a fund that will support a significant portion of field trip costs, enable us to schedule more trips, and travel to more distant regions.
Our graduate students continue to produce high quality research. Moreover, we now require all undergraduate majors to complete a research project. It is our view that the results of student research should be presented at national and regional meetings, but the expenses of travel can be prohibitive for students on a tight budget. Therefore, we also wish to start a fund to support student travel to encourage greater participation in professional meetings and to show others the high level of student research at Texas Tech.
The number of teaching and research assistantships we can award limits graduate enrollment and our ability to recruit graduate students. Your support of graduate fellowships will help us attract the best students to Texas Tech. Because of State-mandated overhead, each fellowship requires from $25,000 to $30,000 per year, which would require an endowment of at least $500,000 per fellowship to support.
As you can see on the donation sheet, we also have a number of scholarship funds that help numerous students every year, but the need for financial aid continues to be larger than the money available.
We welcome your ideas, suggestions and assistance in the quest to improve the Geosciences Department at Texas Tech. You may contact me by phone, regular mail or e-mail if you have any questions, or just want to talk about how the Department is doing. See the department web sites for information about the Department: Geosciences • Atmospheric Sciences
Thanks for your help!
James E. Barrick, Chair
(806) 742-3101
jim.barrick@ttu.edu
Downloadable Donations Form (pdf) (MS Word Document)
Downloadable Newsletter Information Form (pdf) (MS Word Document)