Who we are & what we do...
This page gives a little background about me & the research and teaching I do at TTU with a variety of collaborators, both students and faculty.
@ttustructuralgeology on Instagram
I discovered geology on a field at San Diego State University while I was a Latin American Studies major. (As a digression, prior to that I was a Lit Composition, Business (wtf?), and Astronomy major; if you're a student and you don't know what you want to do with your life, you're not a lone.) My girlfriend at the time had to go on a required field trip for her Physical Geology class. I tagged along as I like the desert. Two grad students, Johnathan Goodmacher and Roy Klinger, led the trip; I enjoyed their explanations of how mountains formed, how the Salton Sea filled with water, and how modern faults created the landscape of the Anza-Borrego desert. I blame them and my first real TA, Brendan McNulty, for fanning the geology flames and turning me into a geologist. Since that trip in 1989, geology has remained a passion and I am grateful to have the opportunity to research Earth evolution and share learning with students & collaborators in a university environment.
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How'd you get into geology?
Current & past students
I have had many wonderful graduate and undergraduate students to work with over the years. I am grateful for the experiences we have shared.
Katie Gates
PhD Candidate
Katie is studying Jurassic shear zones and accretionary tectonics in the Klamath Mountains, CA/OR
Karyss Betzen
MS Candidate
​Karyss is a new MS student working on how gypsum veins are related to the recent landscape evolution in the Southern High Plains.
Melissa Schmidt
Undergraduate Research
Mel is conducting analog fracture experiments in gelatin to replicate horizontal fractures and evaluate stress field rotation during fracture propagation.
Andrea Richardson
MS 2021, Space/time evolution of magmatisim in the Klamath Mountains province (KMP), CA/OR: implications for Cordilleran arc magma periodicity
Jack Rochat
MS 2021, Testing Kinematic Models for Ancestral Rock Mountain Tectonism using Trishear in Sacramento Mountains, NM and the Arbukle -Wichita Mountains, OK
Travis Sparks
TTU MS 2018, Controls on Fracture Distributions within Regional, km-Scale Folds
Vincent Cunningham
MS 2018, Identifying Brittle Deformation and Remote Sensing of Geomorphic Landforms on the Southern High Plains, West Texas
Robinson Jeffers
1887-1961
Matt Garnett
MS 2017, Proterozoic rock fabrics, new insight from the northern Monte Largo Shear Zone, Capilla Peak, Manzano Mountains, central New Mexico, USA
Mahmoud Mahrous
MS 2017, Quantitative 3D Analysis for Natural Micro- Fracture in Woodford Shale, Southern Oklahoma, using Non-Destructive Micro Computer Tomography Technique
Jenna Hessert Doffer
MS May 2016, A Structural Investigation of the Arbuckle Anticlines Related to the Appalachian-Ouachita Orogen.
Jenna is pointing to the McConnell thrust at Mt. Yamnuska.
Jeremy Deans
PhD 2016, Deformation and evolution of the lower oceanic crust
Katie Gates
MS 2015, A Quantitative Analysis of Xenolith Fragmentation and Incorporation in Magma.
Any student who uses duct tape on her boots so she can keep doing field work is worth working with.
David Manoukian
MS 2015, Characterizing the damage zone along portions of the Montosa Fault, Central New Mexico.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
1821-1881
Kaitlyn Andreas
MS 2015, Studying the Geometry and Kinematics of Gypsum-Filled Fractures in the Permian Strata of Caprock Canyons State Park, Texas, USA.
Kaitlyn thumbs up in the Bahamas on the TTU Geosciences bi-annual trip to San Salvador.
Jacob Leader
MS 2013, Microstructural Analysis of Hole 735B, Atlantis Bank, Southwest Indian Range: Reevaluation of High Temperature Fabric Development
Jacob is pondering the meaning of crenulations.
Paul Gifford
MS 2012, Enceladus: Tectonics of Saturn's Icy Satellite
Brendan Hargrove
MS 2012, Emplacement and Hypersolidus Fabric Development in the Wooley Creek Batholith, Klamath Mountains, California
Joe Bauman
MS 2011, Tectonism and Geomorphic Response in the Sacaramento Mountains, south-central New Mexico
Chloe Beddingfield
BS May 2010, yes, that's Brian May of Queen next to Chloe. Chloe earned her PhD at Univ. of Tenn. and now works for NASA and Brian was an advisor to the New Horizon's project.
I basically know Brian May.
Heather S. Anderson
MS 2009, Complex magma-emplacement processes, xenolith incorporation, and polyphase host rock deformation of the 442 Ma Andalshatten Pluton, Norwegian Caledonides
Tim Anderson
MS 2008, Inferring bedrock uplift in the Klamath Mountains Province from river profile analysis and digital topography
David Martin
MS 2007, Structural evolution of the McKinney Hills laccolith, Big Bend National Park
Ryan Krueger
MS 2005, Structural evolution of the Sing Peak pendant: Implications for magma chamber construction and mid-Cretaceous deformation in the central Sierra Nevada, California
Nathan Zimmerman
MS 2005, Host rock fracture analysis, McKinney Hills laccolith, Big Bend National Park.
Wayne Marko
MS 2004, Contact Aureole Rheology of the White Horse Pluton
Jeannette Wolak
MS 2004, Removal & incorporation of xenoliths in the Jackass Lakes pluton, CA
Greg Dumond (l) & Mike Salisbury (r)
MS 2002 and 2003
Mike: High-Temperature Deformation in the Josephine Peridotite: Linkage Between Crustal and Mantle Spreading Structure in a Supre-Subduction Zone Ophiolite
Greg: Magma Chamber Construction in the Middle Crust: Insights from the Sausfjellet Pluton, Bindal Batholith, Norway