Whitman College Geology Department Rocks Spokane Conference

A large group of Whitman students pose together in a conference lobby area.

In May, the Whitman College Geology Department made a strong appearance at the 2024 Joint Cordilleran and Rocky Mountain Section Meeting hosted by the Geological Society of America (GSA) in Spokane.

Seventeen Whitman Geology majors attended the conference, which was sandwiched between the end of finals and graduation. Eleven of those students presented posters in an undergraduate research symposium on Thursday afternoon.

Arlo Smith ’24, Harshvardhan Chopra ’24, Coden Stark ’24, Morgan Sharp ’24, Cameryn Greenough ’24 and Sarah Hoffman ’24 presented posters based on their senior theses. Ekaterina Vieialtsina ’26, McKenna McShane ’26, Rebecca Patterson ’25, Aneesah Sands ’26 and Mehrimo Bakhtalieva ’25 presented posters based on independent studies that they worked on during the previous year.

Whitman Geology professors Lyman Persico, Nick Bader and Pat Spencer attended the conference as well. Persico gave a talk on the causes and impacts of the 2022 extreme flooding in Yellowstone National Park. Throughout the conference, students delved into a variety of fascinating topical sessions, exploring everything from carbon sequestration to exceptional floods to the fiery world of Cascades volcanism.