Dr. Rebecca L. Dodge, Professor Emeritus at Midwestern State University, is the 2020 recipient of the William B. Heroy Jr. Award for Distinguished Service to AGI. Dr. Dodge has longstanding environmental and educational ties to AGI and also co-authored one of AGI’s Environmental Awareness Series publications. In addition, she has been a member of AGI’s former Environment Geoscience Advisory Committee, where she represented the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG).

Dr. Dodge specializes in the application of satellite imagery for resource exploration and for monitoring the effects of landcover change on Earth systems. This expertise made her an excellent lead author, with co-author Russell G. Congalton, of AGI's 2013 Environmental Awareness Series publication, Meeting Environmental Challenges with Remote Sensing Imagery. This graphics-intensive publication gave more than 20 examples of how remote sensing helped provide answers for a range of problems, such as assessments of hurricane damage or urban heat island effects.

Over the past several years Dr. Dodge also has contributed to AGI’s education mission through her co-teaching with AGI staff member Mark Carpenter of an online professional development course in Earth and Space Science. She designed this online course to address the needs of secondary science teachers who are asked to teach Earth science courses but who may have previous training only in other disciplines. To date, more than 150 teachers have benefited from this course.

Dr. Dodge earned her bachelor of science degree in geology from the University of Texas at Arlington and her master's and Ph.D. in geology from the Colorado School of Mines. In addition, she was honored by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 2016 with an Honorary Member Award, reflecting more than 25 years of service to the petroleum industry in committee memberships and service as an officer in several geologic societies.