Department of Geology and Geophysics

College of Engineering and Physical Sciences

With 23 faculty members, our undergraduate and graduate course offerings and research interests span a broad array of earth and planetary sciences.

Situated within the Rocky Mountains, our Department provides students with diverse opportunities for field studies. For example, the widespread Precambrian rocks and complexity of local structural geology provide an ideal setting for petrologic and structural students. Extensive Rocky Mountain basins are the focus of many sedimentological studies. In addition, we can offer many exciting research opportunities in landscape development, water management, volcanic history (Yellowstone), and climatic records from lake sediments.

Our Department in also active in applied science. In tandem with the School of Energy Resources, we provide training and research in hydrocarbon exploration, carbon sequestration, water resources, and watershed management. We also have a very strong program in computational geophysics, with three new faculty that perform large-scale parallel computations to constrain seismic-wave propagation and hydrologic flow.

Geology and geophysics faculty members have conducted research in Costa Rica, Antarctica, Norway, South America, the mid-Atlantic spreading ridge, Alaska, and Canada.

Whether you come from a background in geology, physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics or computation, we think you will be able to find a research group in our Department that will satisfy your professional goals, or at least sate your curiosity about how our planet functions and changes over time.