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Guy Hovis, John H. Markle Professor of Geology, will speak on “A European Sabbatical Travelogue — and Why I Destroy Minerals” noon Friday in Van Wickle Hall room 108.
Lunch will be provided free of charge to students and for $3 to faculty and staff.
Hovis will discuss his recent sabbatical, spent mainly in Paris and Potsdam-Berlin, as well as his research.
A past director of the National Science Foundation’s Petrology and Geochemistry Program, Hovis has been elected to life membership in Clare Hall at Cambridge University, England, and is a Life Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America. He has received numerous grants since 1976 from the National Science Foundation totaling nearly $1 million for support of solution calorimetric research.
He is the recipient of several major Lafayette awards, including the Mary Louise Van Artsdalen Prize for outstanding scholarly achievement, the Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Award for superior teaching and scholarly contribution to his discipline, and the Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Faculty Lecture Award in recognition of excellence in teaching and scholarship.
Hovis has shared his research in many academic publications, including articles coauthored with Lafayette students. He has presented work conducted with Lafayette students at the national meeting of the Geological Society of America. His student collaborators have included geology and environmental geosciences majors Trisha Slemmer ’04 (Quakertown, Pa.), who used an ion exchange process to transform potassium feldspar, a mineral frequently found in volcanic and other rocks, into pure rubidium feldspar, the mineral that gives pink granite its color; Robert Libutti ’02 (Sinking Springs, Pa.), who helped synthesize and analyze a rare form of feldspar; and David Wattles ’00 (New Hartford, N.Y.), with whom he researched the thermodynamic properties of minerals and related substances.
Hovis mentors students conducting research through independent studies and honors theses and teaches the courses From Fire to Ice: An Introduction to Geology (Geology 100), Earth and Planetary Materials (Geology 200), Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology (Geology 307), and Geochemistry (Geology 321).
He has been a member of the Lafayette faculty since 1974 and director of the Hydrofluoric Acid Solution Calorimetry Laboratory since 1976. He served as department head from 1997-2000 and as acting head for other terms.
Among other professional contributions, he served as lecture program administrator for the Mineralogical Society of America from 1995-1999. Hovis earned a Ph.D. (1971) and master’s (1967) in geology from Harvard University and a bachelor’s in geology from Franklin and Marshall College (1964).