Castleton State College Professor Tim Grover Will Give Geology Lecture Today

Tim Grover, associate professor of geology at Castleton State College in Castleton, Vt., will speak on “Metamorphism, Intrusion, and Deformation along the Northwest Border Zone of Idaho Batholith” noon today in Van Wickle Hall room 108.

Free and open to the public, the talk is part of the weekly Geology Department Seminar Series, held at noon most Fridays this spring. Lunch is available at no charge to students and for $3 to faculty and staff.

A member of the Castleton faculty since 1994, Grover’s interests include metamorphic geology, geology of New England and the Adirondacks, structural geology and tectonics, geoscience education, and Geographic Information Systems.

“My research is field-based, so I spend a great deal of time hiking and studying the rocks in the roots of modern and ancient mountain ranges,” he says. “I am currently working on projects in coastal Maine, the eastern Green Mountains near Pomfret, Vermont, and the eastern Adirondacks. My approach is a multidisciplinary one: In addition to geological mapping and collecting data and samples in the field, I study the rocks in thin sections, noting the stable metamorphic mineral assemblages and their textural relationships. I use an electron microprobe to obtain chemical analyses of the minerals in the rocks, and I do thermodynamic calculations to determine how deep the rocks were buried and their maximum temperatures during metamorphism.”

Grover has taught Physical Geology, Historical Geology, Mineralogy, Sedimentology and Stratigraphy, Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology, Regional Geology, Structural Geology, Field Methods, Energy and the Environment, and rock climbing. He also has taught a summer course involving a trip to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and another class at Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce, Zion, and Grand Canyon National Parks to study the geology of the Colorado Plateau.

Grover earned master’s and Ph.D. degrees from University of Oregon in 1984 and 1988, respectively, and a bachelor’s degree from St. Lawrence University in 1981.

Other talks in the geology series this semester have included:

• Art Palmer, a leading expert on caves and director of the Water Resources Program at SUNY-Oneonta, on “America’s Largest Caves: Origin and Exploration”;
• Queens College Professor Alan Ludman on “Field Boots and Batteries: Geologic Mapping with GIS”;
• Charles Ver Straten of the Center for Stratigraphy and Paleontology at New York State Museum on “Mud, Sand, and Mountains: Looking at Sedimentary Rocks, Seeing Tectonics.”