Welcome

About Me - Q&A

• What kind of a geologist are you?

  I would call myself a geochronologist or an isotope geochemist. In Wheaton’s Dept. of Earth and Environmental Science I am the resident “hard rock geologist,” teaching all of the upper level classes that have to do with rocks and minerals. This includes Mineralogy, Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology, Structural Geology, Field Mapping, and Earth History. You can read more about my teaching here.

• What is your favorite class to teach?

  I love teaching introductory courses. Not only do I get to use hands-on activities while teaching about everything from earthquakes to climate change, intro. classes are often a student’s first introduction to geology as a potential career and expose non-majors to the impact that geology has on where and how they live.

• What is one surprising finding from your research?

  I study the mineral garnet. In fact, in grad. school I was sometimes called “Garnet Girl!” You might be most familiar with garnet’s use as a gemstone or as an abrasive in sandpaper, but I use the radioactive elements samarium or lutetium found in garnet to determine when that garnet grew in Earth’s past. As far as I know, I currently hold the record for the oldest reliably dated garnet in the world- at about 3.2 billion years old! You can read more about my research here.

• What else might we want to know about you?

  My students usually call me Dr. M. I also sometimes use Instagram to post about some of my science adventures (@dr.maneiro).