Thanks for visiting my web-site; it is my pleasure to share some of the things I’ve done and plan to do. Basically I’m a field geologist with an interest in all aspects of geology and environmental science. Here at the college I teach our introductory course Dynamic Earth and advanced level courses in Mineralogy and Geochemistry. In the past I’ve had the opportunity to teach most of the geology curriculum and enjoy all of it.

I attended St. Lawrence University, graduating in 1981, and this gave me an excellent background for graduate studies at Carleton University in Ottawa and the University of Kansas. During this time I completed field based projects in northern Canada and acquired analytical skills in geochemistry and geochronology, and mapping in various geologic settings. I was also able, with the collaboration and support of James McLelland, Emeriti Professor Colgate University, to complete the first extensive study of U-Pb zircon ages in the Adirondack Mountains.

After completing my Ph.D. I began work for the Bureau of Environmental Exposure Investigation with the New York State Department of Health. This job introduced me to the wide variety and abundance of environmental issues in New York and elsewhere. Shortly after, I began working at the Environmental Research Center in Oswego, New York on a variety of ways to destroy contaminants in environmental media. This work led to the development of a patented and licensed technology to destroy polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in environmental media. During the summers I launched a ten-year project with my Canadian colleague Dr. Lawrence Aspler (Grinnell College) mapping the Early Proterozoic Hurwitz Group and underlying Ennadi-Rankin Greenstone Belt across 100,000 km2 in Nunavut.

I have the good fortune to belong to an international working group (Global Precambrian Sedimentology Syndicate) whose members are actively involved the study of all aspects of Precambrian geology. These ties have allowed me to offer fantastic opportunities to undergraduate students for research and graduate study. For example, one student had the opportunity to participate in SHRIMP U-PB geochronology last spring and another will travel to Tucson, Arizona this fall to use the ICP-MS laser ablation laboratory.

I began teaching at SUNY Potsdam in 2001 and joined the geology department at St. Lawrence as an associate professor in 2006. My current research projects include:

• The discovery and documentation of an ophiolitic fragment in the Adirondack Lowlands
• Detrital zircon geochronology of metasedimentary units in the Adirondack Highlands.
• The origin and significance of the Piseco Lake Shear Zone, southern Adirondacks.
• The origin of enigmatic concentric structures in the Balmat zinc deposits.
• Magnetic mapping of major Adirondack faults.
• Scaling considerations in sampling and gridding for potential field data.
• The groundwater geochemistry of St. Lawrence County.
• Environmental contamination in the Bering Sea, Alaska.
• The partitioning of persistent organic pollutants in the environment.
•The geochemistry and textural aspects of Precambrian shales.
• The formation of the Peach Bottom Slate by retrograde processes.

These projects are funded by grant money from a variety of sources and have resulted in a number of talks and research papers, often co-authored by student researchers. I often have paid research assistantships to facilitate student involvement in my projects.