ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) is pleased to recognize Dr. Marjorie Chan, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Utah, as the 2024 recipient of the AGI Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Public Understanding of the Geosciences.

Dr. Chan has demonstrated extraordinary commitment to public outreach and community service throughout her career. Her earliest efforts centered on inspiring and supporting young women in the geosciences, and over the decades she focused on promoting public awareness of environmental issues and the urgent need to preserve geoheritage sites.

Dr. Chan has given hundreds of public lectures, served as a volunteer consultant on scores of ecological and preservation projects as well as art collaborations, advised and created instructive material for secondary teachers, and led major Earth Science community initiatives. She coordinated the design and construction of the Sutton Geology and Geophysics Building, the first LEED-certified building on the University of Utah academic campus which included educational visual displays that inspired geoscience building designs across the nation. During her tenure as department chair, she appointed the university's first Geology and Geophysics faculty coordinator of outreach. She has been featured in documentaries including on National Geographic and Discovery Channel, has been a guest on National Public Radio's Science Friday show, and has served as a science advisor for PBS-Nova Science Now. Her NASA science and outreach activities include Endeavor 2016 Dynamic Mars Webinars for K-12 teachers, Mars for Earthlings webinars and short courses, and development of teaching modules for higher education instructors.

She was the 2014 Geological Society of America (GSA) Distinguished International Lecturer where she gave 53 lectures spanning India, New Zealand, Australia, China, Japan, and South Korea. In addition to receiving two national meeting presentation awards from SEPM (Society for Sedimentary Geology), she was the winner of the GSA Distinguished Service Award (2020) and the GSA Sloss Award for Lifetime Achievements in Sedimentary Geology (2019) and was an elected GSA Fellow (1995). She chaired the GSA Diversity Committee (2012-2013), the GSA Sedimentary Geology Division (2014-2015), and the U.S. National Committee for Geological Sciences (2022-2023).

During an academic career of more than 40 years at the University of Utah, Dr. Chan has authored or co-authored more than 150 peer-reviewed articles on a range of sedimentary geology topics. Her work has spanned the Precambrian to the Pleistocene with recent research that applied terrestrial geology examples to better understand Martian geology. She earned a Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1982 and a B.S. in Geology from the University of California-Davis in 1977.

"I am very honored to be recognized by AGI for a career that has been so engaging and fulfilling," said Dr. Chan. "Public engagement is often an afterthought or less valued than research and teaching. I feel that spreading our knowledge more widely is a core principle of scholarship. Our societal future relies on public understanding of the complexities in the natural world."

The AGI Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Public Understanding of the Geosciences is presented to a person, organization, or institution in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the public understanding of the geosciences. Dr. Chan is being recognized at the Friends of AGI Awards Reception during the GSA Connects conference in Anaheim, California, on September 24, 2024.

About AGI
The American Geosciences Institute (AGI), a federation of scientific and professional organizations representing over a quarter-million geoscientists, is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to serving the geoscience community and addressing the needs of society. AGI headquarters are in Alexandria, Virginia.
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Contact:
Geoff Camphire, Communications
gac@americangeosciences.org