Alumni Welcome

November 1, 2007

Dear Alumni and Friends,

Greetings from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences!  The past year was an exciting one in the department, and I am pleased to share news of our recent activities with you.  As always, I wish to thank you for your generous contributions, to describe how your support has helped to improve the quality of our research and teaching programs, and to explain how future contributions can be best directed to help us achieve our goals. Because you have already received a broader overview of departmental activities in our 2007 Annual Report, also available on our website at http://www.earth.northwestern.edu, I will focus on the highlights of what was an important and interesting year in the department’s ongoing expansion phase.

The most exciting departmental news concerns the continuing success of our five new faculty members. All of them--Matthew Hurtgen (geochemistry), Steven Jacobsen (mineral physics), Andrew Jacobson (geochemistry), Francesca Smith (biogeochemistry), and Suzan van der Lee (seismology) are already making important contributions to their respective fields, a fact confirmed by their scholarly productivity and ability to obtain external research funding. The past few months have been especially remarkable for Andy Jacobson. After his selection as one of only two Northwestern representatives to participate in a national competition for a NSF Major Research Instrument (MRI) grant, Andy learned late last spring that the NSF-MRI program would provide him with $850,000 to purchase a Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometer. More good news arrived earlier this fall when Andy won a Packard Fellowship, a highly prestigious five-year award that will fund his research for five years at an annual rate of $125,000. This recognition represents a substantial breakthrough for both EPS and Northwestern. Andy’s Packard award, the first for a NU faculty member since 2003, will enhance the department’s reputation inside and outside NU while also adding to Northwestern’s image as an elite research institution. Additionally, this funding will allow Andy to explore his innovative ideas on the measurement of radiogenic calcium isotopes and their relevance to understanding the carbon cycle and climate change, cutting edge science that will help usher in an era of powerful new analytical research at Northwestern.

The work of our other junior faculty members is also yielding impressive results.  Matt Hurtgen, for instance, recently traveled to the deserts of Namibia as part of his NSF-funded project to collect and analyze new samples of Neoproterozoic rocks representing conditions during the onset of the Snowball Earth event.  Additionally, Suzan van der Lee, the recipient of a prestigious NSF-CAREER grant, has spent much of the past few months performing tomographic modeling on the North American mantle while also preparing her tenure dossier. Further, Steve Jacobsen, a recently designated Mineralogical Society of America distinguished lecturer, has been busily assembling his partially NSF-funded laboratory equipment, which includes Raman spectroscopy for rapid identification of mineral phases as well as diamond-anvil cells for high pressure-high temperature materials research.  Finally, Francesca Smith has also recently spent much time configuring her organic geochemistry lab while also analyzing samples related to her NSF-funded proposal to study the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Based on the recognition our junior faculty members are gaining for their research, it now seems that their talent and energy, which have already helped bring new levels of enthusiasm to Locy Hall, will also strengthen the department’s existing reputation for academic excellence.

While the activities and accomplishments of our new faculty members will help propel the department to new heights, they do carry substantial costs. Indeed, the groundbreaking research planned by our junior faculty—and any potential collaborations between new and established faculty members—will require a true state-of-the-art analytical facility. Toward this end, planning for a new laboratory, slated to be housed in Hogan Hall, has recently intensified. Working with a team of architects, EPS faculty have developed an innovative design that integrates TIMS and IRMS facilities, a radiogenic isotope clean lab, an organic geochemistry lab, an aqueous and sedimentary geochemistry lab, and a mineral physics lab into a series of interlinked modules.  Lab construction should start in a few weeks and will continue for much of the next year.  Although the university will subsidize much of this project, additional departmental funds will be required to complete it. While it is not yet clear how much of the lab’s total cost will be absorbed by EPS, we anticipate that our contribution may run as high as $300,000, a staggering sum for a department of our size. Alumni donations to our Analytical Facility Fund are thus crucial to the department’s stability because they will allow us to pay for the lab from an account solely dedicated for this purpose instead of cutting from other areas of our operating budget. Of course, larger donations, which could take the form of naming gifts for part or all of the facility, would greatly reduce the likelihood of a departmental funding shortfall and would thus be warmly welcomed.

The importance of the analytical facility to the department’s future cannot be overestimated. As I have previously reported, EPS has recently undergone something of a renaissance. Course enrollments have increased; our undergraduate major population has tripled; graduate student morale has steadily improved; and our profile inside and outside the university has dramatically risen. These salutary changes wouldn’t have taken place without the addition of our new faculty members. If EPS wishes to continue moving forward, we must do our best to retain this gifted group of scholars and teachers. To accomplish this goal, the department must offer them the modern research facilities their work merits. If we do not, competing institutions surely will. Past alumni generosity has already facilitated the career growth of our junior faculty members by providing them with valuable “start up” funds. We now ask that you once again support the department at a critical moment by helping underwrite vital infrastructure that will shape the department’s research and identity for years to come.

Even as I emphasize the priority of raising funds for the analytical facility, I cannot overlook the obvious need for contributions to other departmental areas, particularly the graduate program. Recently redoubled efforts to provide our students with high quality field experiences, a core element of any good Earth science graduate program, have resulted in trips to such areas as Colorado, Utah, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Because the educational impact of these trips is immediate and enormous, EPS has committed itself to making field experience a regular part of our undergraduate and graduate curriculums. To achieve this goal, we ask that you make a donation to the ArthurHowland Fund. Similarly, the department’s commitment to remaining competitive with peer institutions (the University of Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis, etc.) in graduate student recruiting recently dictated that we augment university stipends for incoming graduate students by $265 per month, an enhancement that will likely require an annual departmental contribution of over $10,000. Consequently, I also ask that you consider donating to the EPS Gift Account so that we can continue to attract the most promising students from our applicant pool.

To select any of the above giving options, please indicate your fund preference on the enclosed pledge card, make your check payable to Northwestern University, and mail both to us using the envelope provided.  Remember that we always welcome alumni visits and look forward to hearing from you. We also invite you to attend our AGU reception, scheduled for December 11th at the San Francisco Marriott.   Hope to see you there!

With best wishes and warm regards from all in the Department,

Brad Sageman
Professor and Department Chair