PhD., Associate Professor of Geology

Megan Anderson’s Curriculum Vitae

Education

B.A., Carleton College, 1998

Ph.D., University of Arizona, 2005

Welcome to Megan’s world of geophysics!  I am the resident geophysicist in the Geology Department at Colorado College.

My undergraduate degree is in geology…therefore my brand of geophysics is strongly flavored with traditional geologic approaches.  As my students often hear me say, if you remove the “geo” from “geophysics”, you have simply physics.  The wide variety of teaching and research avenues I pursue reflects my philosophy that the strongest science is interdisciplinary.  I tend to “walk the line” between geophysics and geology because it allows me to effectively understand and apply a variety of constraints to any given problem in the geosciences.  I also like to apply many different types of geophysical approaches to any given problem for the same reasons.  I feel lucky to be at a liberal arts college like CC, where I can bring the wide variety of approaches I use in research to my students in the classroom and offer them an array of different research experiences!

My research tends to migrate towards problems and topics centered on better understanding tectonics, including Earth structure, kinematics of rocks in the subsurface, and the dynamics of driving forces for plate tectonics.  I’m most interested in understanding the structure and dynamics of active and recently active tectonic areas (< 50 Ma), but have taken brief forays into applications of seismology for verification of nuclear testing and more recently, structure of cratonic regions.  Like many CC Geology majors, I love to be in the field, so most of my research projects and geophysics classes involve collection of data (both geologic and geophysical) in the field.  Please see my teaching, advising, and research pages for additional insights into my interests in geophysics and geology.

 

 

Courses Taught

GY101 Catastrophic Geology

GY130 Introduction to Geology

GY140 Physical Geology

NS160 FYE Mathematics and Geology of the Great American Desert

GY210 Geologic Methods and Rocky Mountain Evolution

GY240 Tectonics

GY250 Geologic Evolution of South America

GY308 Introductory Geophysics

GY370 Applied Potential Field Geophysics

GY345 Regional Geology (Geology of the Baja, California Region; Geology of Argentina)

GY405 Research Topics

GY445 Regional Studies

Keck Geology Consortium Project “Formation of basement-involved foreland arches: Integrated structural and seismological research in the Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming”

 

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