The 2025 Spring Banquet and Alumni Dinner at the Village Gourmet was very successful. The dinner was well attended by both graduating students and alumni, and we enjoyed an expansive talk by honorary speaker Henry Pettingill, which was full of life lessons — a fitting send-off for our graduating students.

The Field Observations class visited the New River Trail, on a field trip led by Assistant Professor Tina Dura and TA Elizabeth Curtiss.

Grad students Elizabeth Curtiss, Ella Davis, Erika Goldsmith, and Alaina Helm led a tour of our beautiful new lab spaces in the USLB for the department's Advisory Board.

The Friday Seminar was presented by Dr. Lidya Tarhan of Yale University, on "The role of marine silica cycling in driving exceptional fossilization of Earth's earliest animal communities." The visit was hosted by Dr. Ben Gill.

Grad students Oluwaseyi Dasho and Esther Oyedele were selected as AGU Local Science Partners for the 2025 cohort. They traveled to Washington, D.C. for a workshop and Congressional Visit Day, where they met with staffers from Senator Mark Warner, Senator Tim Kaine, Rep. Morgan Griffith, and Rep. Don Beyer Jr., to advocate for sustained and robust funding for science agencies in FY26.