Joel Q.G. Spencer
Ph.D., University of Glasgow, joelspen@ksu.edu
Joel joined the geology department in the summer of 2007 following a postdoctoral
appointment in Austria. Joel will be teaching graduate courses in dating techniques,
with emphasis on his specialty, optically stimulated luminscence. This is a relatively
new field that has exciting possibilities, including dating catastrophic events such
as tsunamis, landslides, and floods that have occurred in the past hundred thousand
years or so. This capability has applications in archaeology as well as geology, and
Joel's lab, one of only a handful in the United States, will likely attract students
and scholars from both fields.