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Chairman O'Kellys News Brief

August 22, 2016

Chairman O'Kellys News Brief

Ganesha

As we approach the beginning of the new term, the staff and I will meet today to provide some preliminary organizational presentations for our new graduate students. Welcome! Thanks to Becky Mansfield who chairs our graduate committee for making this run so well. We will have a departmental meet and greet on Monday which includes a photo op. I ask all the new students in addition to be sure to give Caitlin Naber a photo or a link to an online photo before our Monday meeting. You’ll see why!

Oliver Wigmore successfully passed his Ph.D. dissertation defense on Thursday this week. Ollie’s dissertation is entitled, “Assessing Spatiotemporal Variability in Glacial Watershed Hydrology: Integrating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Field Hydrology, Cordillera Blanca, Peru.” Ollie’s committee included Darla Monroe, Desheng Liu and Bryan Mark (advisor), and Mike Durand of Earth Sciences. The Faculty Representative for the Graduate School was Dr. K. Rafiq Islam of the School of Environment and Natural Resources. Congrats Ollie and good wishes on your post doc in Colorado.
Bryan and Ollie just got back from 16 days of field work in Peru, where they were invited participants in the "Foro Internacional de Glaciares y Ecosistemas de Montañas" organized by Peru's new National Institute for Research of Glaciers and Mountain Ecosystems. These new initiatives at a national scale underscore the value of Andean glacier/water research in a time of rapid change and concerns for water resources/glacier hazard potential. 

I am pleased to inform all that Bryan Mark and Max Woodworth have been elected to the personnel committee, and I thank Becky Mansfield and Alvaro Montenegro who rotate off.

Each Friday, depending on the flow of notices, Caitlin Naber will be sending out a summary of job posts that we have received. This is an organized digest of the myriad different formats and lists we receive. On occasion a job post will come through of an urgent nature and I will send on immediately, but generally, Friday is the day to expect these notes. Faculty may also wish to send on notices to Caitlin. We have already seen an up-tick in ads coming to the department for this fall’s hiring season.  We also expect some good news soon on our own hiring endeavors for 2017.

DERBY HALL FRIENDS!

Just a few small added notes to today’s orientation. This is a very busy, public building and we have a lot of through traffic at the beginning of the term. Some of these folks will be looking for directions – common sources of confusion are the basement and Denney Hall (a different building!)

Please also be very cautious with your personal property and closing/locking doors even if you step away for just a minute. The beginning of term is particularly concerning. We have had some opportunistic crime in past semesters, and it is wise to be alert and careful

Incidentally: all of the key pads are accessible by swiping your BuckID.

 

Morton O’Kelly

Professor & Chair