A Capital Time! The William & Mary Geology Reception in Washington, D.C.

The Geology Department puts together annual receptions for our alumni at both the Geological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union meetings during the Fall semester. It is a great way to connect with Geology alums that are graduate students, academics, or geoscience researchers. But our graduates go on to a diverse array of careers, so we decided to throw a party at William & Mary’s Washington Center to engage with our dynamic group of alums in the Washington Metro area.

William & Mary’s campus is gripped by a severe case of the final exam blues, so the faculty eagerly traversed the 240 kilometers (150 miles) from Virginia’s Colonial Capital to the Nation’s Capital for a change in scenery and our early evening reception.

All told, we had nearly fifty people in the house with alums from five different decades represented. I’d not seen some folks in 15 years; it was great to learn of their careers and families. Our alums in the DC Metro area work in a wide variety of careers: from national security to NGOs, from public education to private sector consulting, from environmental engineering to health care. Our graduates are making an impact in many different fields.

A full house! The William & Mary geologists in the house at the Washington Center.

Networking! W&M alums Marielle Weikel and Sharon Hartzel.

We talked of past adventures, and some of the more memorable misadventures. There was networking galore (a popular DC pastime). It was great to see members from the class of 1972 mingling with members from the class of 2015; despite a four-decade gap, their experiences from field trips to the hands-on classroom learning to the supportive community were similar.

As Department Chair, I updated the assembled, and captive, audience on the state of the department. It would not be a proper geology presentation without a time-series plot, so I splashed out plots illustrating W&M Geology graduates over time. Who doesn’t like to look at a graph after a long day at work?

Time-series graphs of William & Mary Geology graduates per year and the cumulative total over time.

These are exciting times in the Geology Department as the number of Geology students has climbed to a record numbers- we are on track to graduate >40 majors in May of 2016. The temporal trends are intriguing, and best illustrated by the 3-year running average curve. Notice the late 1970s maxima, the early 1990s minima, the 1996 singularity, and the current expansion. Hypotheses abound as to the causes of these ups and downs in enrollment.

Since the mid-1960s (the department was founded in 1961) there have been well over 800 geology graduates. Given William & Mary’s modest size this is quite a yield. Fifty percent of William & Mary’s geology graduates have finished since 1996. Put another way Professor Brent Owens, who arrived at W&M in 1996, has taught mineralogy to approximately half of all the W&M Geology majors (who could forget Brent’s cogent discussions of kinoshitalite and other wondrous minerals?). A quarter of all our alums have graduated in the past decade- our alumni base is young and starting to make its mark on the professional world.

Young alums Graham Lederer, Charles Plummer, and Mea Geizhals having a chat.

It was a great evening. Thanks to all who took the time to attend. Kudos to the Washington Center staff for helping to make it happen, and to Professor Heather Macdonald for the photos.

The geologists will be back!