Department of Geology Collection, ca. 1880-1998, n.d. | Oberlin College Archives

Origins of the Department of Geology

It is probably correct to state that geology instruction at Oberlin begins officially in 1848.  George N. Allen, class of 1838, was hired in 1838 as Teacher of Sacred Music.  He held that post for 3 years, while simultaneously enrolled in the seminary during the second and third years of this position.  In 1841, Allen was promoted to Professor of Sacred Music, a title he held until 1864 (records show no degree from the seminary, but an A.M. in 1848).  During his appointment, Allen was Principal of the Preparatory Department from 1842-1846.  In 1848, Allen was named Professor of Geology.  His titled changed to Professor of Natural History from 1849-1864, and then to  Professor of Geology and Natural History from 1864-1871.  Allen served as Secretary and Treasurer of the College from 1863-1865, and left the Sacred Music professorship in 1864.  After retiring in 1871, Allen joined the Hayden survey, and he died in 1877 in Cincinnati.  Allen's wife, Caroline Mary Rudd, class of 1841, was a member of the Women's Board of Managers from 1851-1870.

John Bulkley Perry, A.B. University of Vermont 1847 and 1853 graduate of the Andover Seminary, was hired in 1870 as Lecturer on Religion and Science.  He took over the Professorship of Geology and Natural History vacated by Allen in 1871, but he died in Cambridge, MA in October 1872.  The geology professorship was vacant from 1872-1874, then filled by Albert Allen Wright in 1874.  A. A. Wright enrolled in the preparatory department in 1859 and then enrolled in the College.  Wright received his A.B. in 1859, his A.M. in 1865, and completed the seminary in 1870. Wright left Oberlin in 1870 and returned in 1874, a year before earning his Ph.D. from Columbia University (in 1875).  In this sense, Wright was Oberlin's first 'modern' professor, i.e. the first Oberlin professor of geology to hold the Ph.D. degree. A. A. Wright was Professor of Geology and Natural History from 1874 to 1905, when he died.  He also served as Curator of the Museum.  By the way, the Geology and Natural History position changed to Geology and Zoology in 1897.

Curiously, probably Oberlin's most renowned 19^th century geologist is G. Frederick Wright (class of 1859), who held a chair in the Oberlin Theological Seminary from 1881-1907. He was one of the earliest and most vigorous proponents of the theory of ice ages, and was one of the original 112 Fellows of the Geological Society of America (which was founded in 1889).

Geology in the 20^th Century

Noteworthy faculty members during the first half of the 20th century include G. D. Hubbard, who received the first Ph. D. in Geography granted in the United States, and Francis J. Pettijohn, who left Oberlin to return to the University of Minnesota for the Ph. D. (in geology).  From Minnesota, Pettijohn embarked on a distinguished career at University of Chicago and later the Johns Hopkins University (where Bruce Simonson was one of his last Ph.D. students).  Pettijohn was a long-time member of the National Academy of Science, and received awards and honorary medals by the Geological Society of America, the Geological Society of London, the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists, and the International Association of Sedimentologists.

Two of the faculty members teaching in the department in the 1950s, Drs. Frederick Foreman and Ruel B. Frost, began their Oberlin careers in 1929.  The third faculty member, Dr. Charles W. Carlston, arrived in Oberlin in 1947.  In addition to the three teaching faculty, there were numerous research associates, the most notable of whom was Helen F. Pulver, who married Frederick Foreman.  Helen Pulver Foreman became an internationally recognized radiolarian paleontologist, and was the leading radiolarian specialist on many of the early Deep Sea Drilling Project reports published in the 1960's.  These reports were instrumental in documenting sea-floor spreading as part of plate tectonic theory.  In 1954, Dr. Lawrence de Mot replaced Carlston, and in 1962 Drs. James L. Powell and Anthony Gordon arrived to fill faculty positions vacated by de Mot and Frost.

Prior to 1962, we were a Department of Geology and Geography, with three full-time faculty members.  According to William Skinner, the transformation from Department of Geology and Geography to Department of Geology coincided with the arrival of Powell and Gordon in 1962.  Fred Foreman retired in 1966, and the Department of Geology hired Dr. William Skinner as his replacement.  In that same year, Dr. Gordon resigned and was replaced by Dr. Stephen Streeter.  Thus, in 1966, the Department of Geology consisted of three faculty members with specializations in paleontology (Streeter), geochemistry (Powell), and petrology (Skinner).  In 1967, the Department of Geology grew to a faculty size of four with the addition of a sedimentologist, Dr. Lee R. High.

Stephen Streeter left the department in 1970, and the department hired Dr. R. Peter Richards as his replacement.  Richards left in 1977, and Dr. Andrew H. Knoll replaced him.  Knoll remained until 1982, when he resigned to accept a faculty position at Harvard.  Knoll is now Professor of Biology and Geology at Harvard, has served as Chair of the Biology Department and in the Dean's Office there, is a Member of the National Academy of Science, and was awarded the C. D. Walcott Medal from the Paleontological Society.  Dr. Ron Lewis filled the position vacated by Knoll for one year, and the Department hired Dr. Ruth Elder in 1983.  Elder left in 1987, and we hired Dr. Mary L. Droser to fill this position.  In 1989, Droser was lured to the University of California at Riverside, where she is currently a Professor of Geology.  We hired Dr. Spafford Ackerly as a temporary replacement for Droser, and then hired Dr. Keith Meldahl in 1990.  Meldahl resigned in 1996 to take a position on the west coast, and we hired Erik Harvey to fill this position for the coming year.  We hired Karla Parsons-Hubbard in 1998.

During his tenure at Oberlin, Powell was instrumental in advancing the field of isotope geochemistry; he co-authored an important monograph on strontium isotope geochemistry and wrote several research articles on the subject.  In the late 1960's, Powell moved into the College administration.  As you may know, Powell was first in the Dean's Office, became Provost of the College, and was eventually Acting President of the College in the early 1980s.  He left Oberlin to become President of Franklin & Marshall College, then became President of Reed College, President of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, and is currently President of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.  Dr. Normal Grant, also a geochemist, joined the department in a non-continuing position in 1969 in replacement of J. L. Powell.  Grant remained at Oberlin until 1976, when Dr. Grant Skerlec was hired to fill the 'Powell position.'  Skerlec left to join the oil industry in 1979, when the department hired me (Steven F. Wojtal) in this position; I still fill this position.

In 1978, L. R. High resigned to join Mobil Oil Company.  Dr. Hardarshan Valia filled this faculty line for a year.  Dr. Bruce Simonson was hired into this faculty position in 1979, and has remained here since then. As you know, William Skinner retired in 1999, and we hired Jonathan Castro to fill his position in 2000.

We were granted an addition to staff in 2001, and have just hired Dr. Laura Moore to fill our position in earth surface processes.  On being granted that position, we submitted a request for a 'built-in sabbatical replacement,' which CFC granted last year.  We then hired Dr. Dennis Hubbard to fill that fractional but continuing position.  Thus, in the last two years the department has grown to about 5.6 FTE.

As I understand it, the Department was housed in a separate building on North Professor Street for many years, and moved to Severance when the Kettering Building was completed in the early 1960's.  You are correct in remembering when we moved to Carnegie.  It was December 1988 through January 1989.

Distinguished Alumni

I list below alumni who have distinguished themselves in geology.  Please note that several of these individuals have long biographies in American Men and Women of Science (AMWS) and other such compendia.

Dr. Rosemary Buden - Program Director for Experimental and Geochemistry at the National Science Foundation. Former professor at SUNY Binghamton, former Fellow at the Carnegie Institute of Washington, and former staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Dr. J. T. Dutro, Jr.  - Staff Geologist and former Chief of the Paleontology Stratigraphy Branch of the U. S. Geological Survey; a leading authority on brachiopods.

Dr. David H. Eggler - Professor of Geology at Pennsylvania State University and awarded the L. R. Wager Prize by the International Association of Volcanology and Geochemistry of the Earth's Interior.

Dr. J. Alfred Fagerstrom - Emeritus Professor of Geology at University of Nebraska and a leading authority on coral reefs.

Dr. Peter T. Flawn - Emeritus Professor of Geology and Emeritus President of University of Texas at Austin; I believe that he also was Chancellor of the University of Texas system, but I cannot find information on that.  Member of National Academy of Science and recipient of medals and awards from the American Geologic Institute.

Helen Pulver Foreman - A specialist in radiolarian paleontology who was the senior staff scientist on several legs of the Deep Sea Drilling Project.  Foreman was instrumental in establishing the marine geological support for the sea floor spreading hypothesis.  I was unable, in the time available, to locate biographical information for her, but Archives should have something.  She died in 1979 or 1980, and I know that there was a memorial minute read about her at the time.

Dr. Lawrence W. Funkhouser - Director and Vice President, Exploration and Production for Chevron Corporation; former President of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists; Honorary Doctor of Sciences recipient from Oberlin in 1990.

Dr. Robert B. Halley - Geologists with the U. S. Geological Survey, and an expert on sedimentation in carbonate banks.

Dr. Carole S. (Stentz) Hickman - Professor of Integrative Biology & Paleontology atthe University of California at Berkeley.

Dr. N. Gary Lane - Professor of Geology and Department Chair at University of Indiana at Bloomington and past President of the Paleontological Society.

Dr. Peter Molnar (actually a physics alum) - former Professor of Geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute Technology; now a Senior Research Associate at the University of Colorado.  He was nominated to the National Academy of Sciences, but declined the nomination.

Bonnie Robinson - Geologist with Office of Solid Waste, U. S. Environmental Protection Agency; past Vice President of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists' Division of Environmental Geosciences.

Dr. J. William Schopf - Professor of Paleobiology at University of California Los Angeles and Director of the Center for the Study of Evolution and Origin of Life. Schopf is the recipient of the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists Outstanding Paper Award, the Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society, the Alan T. Waterman award of the National Science Foundation and National Research Council, and Mark Clark Thompson medal of the National Academy of Science. He served as a Trustee of Oberlin College.

Dr. Thomas J. Schopf - late Professor of Paleobiology at University of Chicago.

I believe that the Schopfs' father (and perhaps their uncle) was also Oberlin alumni in geology; In fact, one Schopf graduated from the Department in 1929 and another in 1931.

Dr. Jeffrey Severinghaus - Associate Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography of the University of California at San Diego.

Dr. Basil Tikoff  - Assistant Professor of Geology at University of Wisconsin-Madison, recipient of the Geological Society of America's Donath Medal (honoring persons under 35 who have made outstanding contributions to earth sciences), and a Packard Foundation Fellow.

Dr. John V. Walther - formerly Professor of Geology at Northwestern University and founder and director of the Environmental Science Major program there; currently Matthews Professor of Geology at Southern Methodist University.

Dr. David Walker - Professor of Geology at the Lamont-Doherty Observatory of Columbia University; winner of the Clarke Medal of Geochemical Society.

Dr. Sidney H. Whitaker - senior scientist with Geotechnical and Division of Atomic Energy Canada.

Several of our more recent alumni are presently active in the field.  For example, we have recent alumni teaching at Lafayette College, Mount Holyoke College, City University of New York, Cleveland State University, New Mexico Institute of Technology, Ohio University, and Wesleyan University; working at national research laboratories; and holding prominent positions in petroleum exploration companies.

This history was written by Steven Wojtal, Department of Geology, May 20, 2002.