You’ll never see the world the same way again.
Not after a class with assistant professor of geology Jeffrey Vervoort. Like an underground “CSI” cop, he uses geochemical forensics to piece together geologic history. And so will you. You could end up presenting a research paper to an organization such as the Geological Society of America.
Vervoort sees his Introductory Geochemistry as a means of understanding our planetl. The same thinking is behind a new course, Introduction to Oceanography.
“My philosophy is to use geochemical tools to understand how the earth works rather than looking at minutiae,” he says.
Real-world focus brings it home to students
He makes his subjects relevant by tapping into fundamental interest in “how things are, how things work.” In his oceanography course, for instance, he and his class monitored Hurricane Katrina and related it to the way the ocean impacts weather. Global warming is sure to be a topic as well.
Vervoort’s research goal is to understand the Earth from a geochemical perspective. Using radiogenic isotopes, he traces geological processes and determines the ages of rocks and geological events. His research efforts center around the radiogenic isotope facility at WSU, and his research group consists of students, post-doctoral candidates, and visiting researchers.
Professor Vervoort is also widely published, with papers in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, Earth Planet, Geology, Journal of Structural Geology, Tectonics, and a dozen other scientific journals and forums.
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