2014 HGS Outstanding Student Awards
Elizabeth Colmenares
Texas A&M
I would like to become a geology professor and a motivational speaker for high schools or community colleges. Elizabeth’s education stopped at the age of 11 when her parents moved to Mexico and she did not have the chance to continue school. As an adult, she came back to the United States and worked hard to make up for the large gap she had in her education, subsequently enrolling at Texas A&M University for her geology degree.
There, she has been active in student leadership positions and supported her husband through two cancer diagnoses, all while maintaining one of the strongest academic record of her class. She ultimately intends to go to graduate school in geology, after which she wants to be a professor.
Meagan DePugh
Sam Houston State University
Meagan is a senior geology student at Sam Houston State University who plans on graduating in August of 2015 with majors in both geology and mathematics. She is currently a member of the Sam Houston Association of Geology Students and an officer in Sam Houston’s AAPG student chapter. She works as a teaching assistant for two of the freshman level geology courses. As well as teaching, Meagan has assisted in research under Dr. Patrick Harris and Dr. Jon Sumrall. She has received a place on Sam Houston’s Dean’s List for two of the three semesters that she has attended Sam Houston State University.
Shuo (Echo) Ding
Doctoral Candidate, Rice University Earth Science Department
The Rice Earth Science Department is pleased to nominate Ms. Shuo (Echo) Ding as a recipient of a HGS Outstanding Student Award.
Ms. Ding started the Rice program in June of 2011 as a doctoral student, working under the direction of Professor Rajdeep Dasgupta. She received both her undergraduate at the China University of Geoscience...one of the best earth science research centers in China. While there, she was selected for the intensive undergraduate program and won each year there an institutional scholarship based on her GPA standings from Petro China.
At Rice Echo’s first focus is igneous petrology and geochemistry, and after she took a first course on planetary science at Rice, she became fascinated by the deep sulfur cycle on Mars. Now her research focuses on measuring and analyzing the sulfur content on Martian meteorites. She and her advisor are current writing the results of this work for publication. She also is running experiments to test the partial melting of the igneous process on Mars.
Echo, who has one of the highest GPA’s in the Rice Department, says that she remains fascinated with Earth Science. She likes going outside to do fieldwork and she is an enthusiastic rock climber and mountaineer. After she completes her degree she hopes to stay in academia where she can both continue her research and teach. She says that she benefited tremendously from good teaching and she hopes to continue in the profession, both to train new students and to continue her learning as she progresses in her career.
Echo is also very enthusiastic about Rice. She loves the campus and all the trees. Mostly she enjoys the dedication of all the people in the Department. “They are devoted to their work,” she says, “no matter what they plan to do after they graduate whether it’s in industry or academia. The environment here drives me to do my best and I feel that I am at home.”
Marie G. De Los Santos
University of Houston
Marie is a senior at the University of Houston where she is pursuing her B.S. in Geology. She earned her B.B.A. in Marketing from The University of Texas at Austin in 2009. After two years of working, she decided to go back to school to pursue her passion for geology. She is currently working on her Senior Honors Thesis with her advisor Dr. Peter Copeland on the Lobo Formation of southern New Mexico which involves magnetostratigraphy, paleoaltimetry, and Laramide tectonics. She also works as an undergraduate research assistant for the Caribbean Basins, Tectonics, and Hydrocarbons (CBTH) research consortium headed by Dr. Paul Mann where she is investigating the effects of salt diapirs on Texas rivers. She has presented her senior thesis research in several meetings, including an oral presentation at the 2013 GSA Annual Meeting in Denver, CO, the 2013 Robert E. Sheriff Lecture Series where she won the Tier 1 student poster competition, and the 2014 GCSSEPM Bob F. Perkins Conference where she earned an honorable mention in the student poster competition. She plans to attend graduate school as a Ph.D candidate starting Fall 2014.
Wesley Turner
Stephen F. Austin State Univerisity
Wesley Turner is a graduate student at Stephen F. Austin State University and is pursuing a MSc degree in Geology with a thesis focusing on the mineralogical controls on hydrocarbon production in unconventional shales utilizing X-Ray diffraction. He completed his BS in Geology in May, 2013, graduating Summa Cum Laude. He is an active member of the student chapters of AAPG and Sigma Gamma Epsilon and has made significant contributions to the development of the East Texas Core Repository. He was an integral member of the Imperial Barrel Award team that represented Stephen F. Austin State University in 2014. In his free time, he enjoys outdoor activities and working towards solutions for complex mathematical of geologic phenomena.