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2016 AGI Executive Committee Welcomed at the GSA Annual Meeting
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Maureen Moses (mmoses@americangeosciences.org)
12/8/2015
Alexandria, VA - The American Geosciences Institute welcomed its 2015-2016 at the Geological Society of America (GSA) Annual Meeting held last month in Baltimore, Maryland. New officers included President-Elect Jean M. Bahr, Treasurer Charlene Sundermann, and Member-at-Large Diane Smith. These new officers joined officers already in service of AGI including President Scott Tinker, Past-President Eric Riggs, Secretary Bill Siok, and Members-at-Large Katherine Lee Avary and Paul Bertsch.
Bahr is currently a professor at University of Wisconsin at Madison, and holds degrees from Stanford and Yale. She is a fellow and was the President of GSA from 2009-2010. She currently is an editor of the AGU journal Water Resources Research. In 2012 she was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. Under her leadership at GSA, position statements were finalized on Climate Change, Public Investment in Earth Science Research, Role of Government in Mineral and Energy Resources Research, Expanding and Improving Geoscience in Higher Education, the Importance of Teaching Earth Science and Diversity in the Geoscience Community. She also played a key role in strengthening the relationship between GSA and the GSA Foundation.
Sundermann was lauded for her basic skills in non-profit financial management that she honed while serving as the President for the Association for Women Geoscientists (AWG) from 2009-2010 and then as President of AWG Foundation from 2011 to 2013. While at AWG, she is credited with establishing awareness of specific financial controls required for a fiducially stable organization. She also increased partnerships with other geoscience organizations such as the GSA Women in Geology Mentoring Program.Following several years working in the private and government sectors, she received a graduate degree in science and environmental public policy from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota and currently pursueing a law degree from the University of St. Thomas. She continues contributing to the geoscience community through service to organizations like AWG and AGI.
Smith, currently the Chair of Geosciences at Trinity University, has led a career filled with service to geoscience organizations. She has been active in many organizations including GSA as well as the Council on Undergraduate Research. She has served on many committees helping organize meetings, scholarships, awards and research in addition to maintaining her own research program in Igneous Petrology and Geochemistry at Trinity University. Her peers recognize her for her stalwart service to the geoscience community, and noted that she will carry this level of enthusiasm and commitment to AGI.
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The American Geosciences Institute is a nonprofit federation of geoscientific and professional associations that represents more than 250,000 geologists, geophysicists and other earth scientists. Founded in 1948, AGI provides information services to geoscientists, serves as a voice of shared interests in the profession, plays a major role in strengthening geoscience education, and strives to increase public awareness of the vital role the geosciences play in society's use of resources, resiliency to natural hazards, and interaction with the environment.