Monday, May 21, 2007
Laura Bordelon spending summer in Utah
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USI geology graduate Laura Bordelon ‘06 has accepted a field position with the National Park Service to survey for new dinosaur sites at the Grand Staircase National Monument in Utah this summer. She will work in a vast area that offers an array of scientific and historic resources. She will survey a location identified as a site from a period of time near the end of the dinosaur age. Along with another NPS employee, she will use rock hammer, compass, and GPS system to map the area. She said there are sites in that area where bones of dinosaurs have already been found. She may help excavate but won’t be assembling bones in the laboratory. Her bachelor’s degree in geology made her eligible for the position. She has received a teaching assistantship at Southern Illinois University in the fall where she will work toward a graduate degree in geobiology. Bordelon is a research assistant for Dr. Paul Doss, associate professor of geology. The two presented a paper in Philadelphia in the fall semester about the ground water wells at USI. She assisted in assembling a CR10X logger system, designed software to monitor the ground water, and built a Web site that offers information about the ground water in the tri-state. She met geologists from around the country at the conference and the local ground water site may become part of a national network of wells called Ground Water Climate Response Network through the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Bordelon studied in Osaka, Japan, at a Japanese University while a USI student. She learned Japanese culture, religion, and architecture as a foreign exchange student. During another semester, as a guest student of State University of New York (SUNY) Brockport, she lived in Russia and stayed with a traditional Russian family while she learned the Russian language with other foreign students. She is originally from Billings, Montana, but came to Evansville in 2002 when her family moved so her father, Dr. Tom Bordelon, could teach social work at USI. |
