EASTERN OREGON UNIVERSITY GEOLOGY

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Eastern Oregon University is located in the La Grande Basin, a graben in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon. Our area has been referred to as "a geological wrecking yard" of 240-200 million year old tropical volcanic island arcs, 150-100 million year old granitic batholiths, 40-20 million year old andesitic and rhyolitic volcanics, and 16-2 million year old Columbia River flood basalts and Powder River andesites, all deformed by block faulting and carved by Pleistocene glaciers. We’re close to the Wallowa and Elkhorn Mountains, Hells Canyon, the John Day Fossil Beds, the Owyhee volcanic area and a lot of other spectacular geologic sites. And, the Cascades, the Oregon coast, Yellowstone, Glacier National Park and other areas are within a day’s drive! It is a great place to study geology!

We are a group of students and faculty who love going out on field trips and learning about the geologic history of the beautiful area we live in.

CLICK ON THESE LINKS TO LEARN MORE ABOUT WHAT WE DO:

· RECENT CLASS TRIPS

· PHI BETA ROCK (THE EOU GEOLOGY CLUB)

· EASTERN OREGON GEOLOGY (OUR ON-LINE JOURNAL)

· ALUMNI NEWS

· STUDENT AND FACULTY PUBLICATIONS

Our faculty include:

JAY VAN TASSELL: Jay grew up on Lake Waccabuc in South Salem, New York and went to Bowdoin College in Maine for his undergraduate geology and physics degrees.  He moved on to Wisconsin, where he studied coastal erosion on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Lake Superior for his M.S. in Oceanography and Limnology.  Jay received his Ph.D. in Geological Oceanography in 1979 from Duke University, where he studied the North Carolina coast and turbidity current deposition on the ocean floor offshore of the Bahamas.  He moved on to Guilford College in North Carolina, where he taught for 7 years and studied the Devonian sediments of Virginia and West Virginia.  Jay arrived at Eastern in 1988.  He met his wife, April, in his 1989 Physical Geology class and they were engaged by the end of the quarter! Jay has studied the geologic history of the Grande Ronde Valley and the sediments and bathymetry of Wallowa Lake. He is currently learning about the fossils and sediments of the Baker City and Keating areas.  Jay advises the EOU geology club, Phi Beta Rock.

MARK FERNS: Mark works for the Oregon State Department of Geology and Mineral Industries in Baker City and serves as an adjunct professor of geology at EOU.   Mark’s knowledge of the geology of Eastern Oregon has proven invaluable!