Stories

John Holbrook, PhD, and his students launch "Once Upon a Geologic Time," a video series uncovering the ancient histories hidden in rock formations worldwide. In the first installment, Holbrook and graduate student Sam Knox ’25 take viewers deep into the Raton Basin.

Many Texans don’t realize that within the past century, there have been more than 100 earthquakes in our state that have been large enough to be felt. Five of these earthquakes have had magnitudes between 5 and 6, making them large enough to be felt over a wide area and produce significant damage. While Texas has many fault lines, Helge Alsleben, associate professor of geology at TCU, explains why our earthquake hazard is small in comparison to other states and how seismic activity is monitored.

Omar Harvey understands the benefits of service learning for his students. Through the opportunities he presents, they learn more about the community and themselves while fulfilling a local need and meeting classroom or degree requirements. Harvey believes that service learning is important because it connects what is taught in the classroom with real-world experiences and instills the habit of performing a service for others.

TCU geological sciences professor, John Holbrook, discusses how geothermal energy could become the next economically viable source of clean energy. Technology for harnessing heat from the earth’s core is rapidly developing. Holbrook has been an outspoken advocate for greater investment in geothermal production, especially as Texas continues to encounter questions over its dependence on natural gas to produce electricity.

TCU is a location host this year to the growing GIS Day. The worldwide celebration is centered around discovering the world through geographic information systems, a scientific framework for gathering, analyzing and visualizing geographic data.

A team of five geology graduate students from TCU (Fabian Pena, Carter Lewis, Tyler Zeiger, Sam Totz, and Noah Underwood) competed in the global finals of the AAPG Imperial Barrel Award (IBA) Program competition after winning the regional competition in March.