Bulletin News

04/14/2010 

Terry Engelder, a structural geologist who specializes in fracture mechanics and a leading authority on Marcellus gas shale, will discuss the findings of researcher Pearl Sheldon nearly 100 years ago, on Monday, April 26, at SUNY Cortland.

A professor of geosciences at Penn State, Engelder will present “Dr. Pearl Sheldon: Why Her Study of Jointing in Devonian Shale Really Matters to the North American Gas Shale Play 100 Years Later,” at 7 p.m. in Sperry Center, Room 104.

The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Geology Department, the Geology Club and the Campus Artist and Lecture Series.

Engelder is a renowned authority on joints sets in the bedrock of the Appalachian Basin. He will discuss papers on the geology of Central New York written by Sheldon and published in 1912 and 1926. Sheldon earned her Ph.D. from Cornell University in the early 1900s.

Engelder, who previously served on the staffs of the U.S. Geological Survey, Texaco and Columbia University, holds a Bachelor of Science from Penn State, a Master of Science from Yale University and a doctorate from Texas A&M.

He also was a visiting professor at University of Graz in Austria and visiting professor at the University of Perugia in Italy. He was honored with a Fulbright Senior Fellowship in Australia and a Penn State’s Wilson Distinguished Teaching Award. A member of a U.S. earth science delegation to visit the Soviet Union immediately following the Nixon-Brezhnev détente, Engelder enjoyed the singular distinction of helping Walter Alvarez collect the samples that led to the famous theory for dinosaur extinction by a large meteorite impact.

Engelder has written numerous research papers, many focused on Appalachia, and a research monograph, Stress Regimes in the Lithosphere. Internationally, he has worked on exploration and production problems with companies including Saudi Aramco, Royal Dutch Shell, Total, Agip and Petrobras.

More information on Engelder can be found at www.geosc.psu.edu/~engelder/.

For more information on the talk, contact Gayle Gleason, Geology Department, at (607) 753-2816.