Reinhard "Bud" Wobus
Edna McConnell Clark Professor of Geology

301 Clark Hall • (413) 597-2470 • rwobus@williams.edu

I am primarily an igneous petrologist with a strong regional slant toward the southern Rocky Mountains of Colorado and New Mexico, a petrologic preference toward granites and felsic volcanics, and a temporal affinity for the Proterozoic. My 40+ summers of field experience --18 of them as a part-time (WAE) member of the USGS and most of them with students from Williams and other colleges--have focussed on unravelling the mysteries of the oldest rocks of the Southern Rockies. I was fortunate enough to be part of the regional mapping teams assembled by the Survey to study the Pueblo and Denver "2-degree" quadrangles in preparation for the state geological map of Colorado published in 1987. This opportunity, along with subsequent work on the Precambrian rocks in the Aztec and Raton 2-degree quadrangles in New Mexico, gave me an overview of thousands of square miles of Proterozoic crystalline rocks, from which my students and I continue to extract more specific topical problems to work on. Some of these include the petrology of alkaline plutons associated with the Pikes Peak batholith; the geochemistry and tectonic setting of bimodal metavolcanic rocks of the Colorado Province; and the chronology of pluton emplacement during the Proterozoic. Sojourns away from the basement rocks have included a petrologic and geochemical study of parts of the mid-Tertiary Thirtynine Mile Volcanics Field of central Colorado and a study of Lower Paleozoic metavolcanic rocks in the Coastal Maine Magmatic Province. (Both of these projects were undertaken in conjunction with students and faculty from member schools of the national Keck Geology Consortium).

Education

• Stanford University, Ph.D., 1966
• Harvard University, M.A., 1963
• Washington University (St. Louis), B.A., 1962

Courses

• Geos 102: An Unfinished Planet
• Geos 202: Mineralogy & Geochemistry
• Geos 303: Igneous & Metamorphic Petrology
• WSP: Geology of the National Parks

Honors students (*=Keck Geology Consortium research project; x = independent study project)

• 2007 Sam Tuttle*
• 2006 Emily Fertig*
• 2004 Katie Ackerly*, Paige McClanahan*
• 2003 Karl Remsen
• 2002 Nathan Cardoos*
• 2000 Rebecca Atkinson*
• 1999 Erik Klemetti*
• 1999 Jen Newton
• 1998 Kate Wearn*
• 1997: Martha Folley*
• 1996: Myra Hill*
• 1996: Rebecca Thomas*
• 1995: John Phipps*
• 1995: Pete Taylor*
• 1994: Michelle Coombs*
• 1994: Mike Seckler*
• 1993: Rachel Beane*
• 1993: Lindley Hall*
• 1992: Andrew Tittler*
• 1991: George Booth*
• 1989: Karin Johnson*
• 1988: Dave Mochel*
• 1987: Sara Finnemore
• 1985: Chris Goss
• 1982: Eban Goodstein^x
• 1981: Pat Dobson^x
• 1980: John Welty; Cathy (Allen) Manduca^x
• 1978: Dirk Hovorka
• 1976: Brock Riedell
• 1975: Mike Wilson
• 1974: Bob Anderson
• 1970: Bob Irwin
• 1969: Henry Flint

Other Professional Experience

As a long-time proponent of the value of research as a significant component of an undergraduate science education, I was a founding member of the Geology Council of the Council on Undergraduate Research in 1988. I was also co-editor (with Stan Mertzman at F&M) of CUR's first Directory of Research in Geology at Undergraduate Institutions (1989).

To facilitate collaborative research opportunities among students and staff in small geology departments at liberal arts colleges, I helped to establish (with Mel Kuntz and Gerry Brophy at Amherst) the "WAMSIP-Geology" Consortium (Williams-Amherst-Mt. Holyoke-Smith Interinstitutional Project in Geology) with NSF support in the early 70's. This program was funded for 3 years, with most field work taking place in Colorado and along the Atlantic seaboard.

Taking this successful idea one giant step forward in the mid-1980's and based on my idea for a larger consortium, Bill Fox and I submitted the proposal that established the Keck Geology Consortium (now 18 colleges coast-to-coast) which has supported undergraduate research and innovations in geoscience education for over a decade. Nearly 80 Williams geology majors, all of our staff, and over 1000 students nationwide have participated in the research projects and symposia of the Keck consortium to date. I have been the Williams representative to the Keck Consortium governing board since its inception and have been on the executive committee since 2006. With considerable help from Pat Acosta, Paul Karabinos, and David Dethier, I also organized the consortium's annual research symposium on the Williams campus in April, 1996.

As a member of the summer staff at the Colorado Outdoor Education Center near Florissant, CO, for some 20 years, I have directed many geology/natural history field weeks for Williams alumni based at The Nature Place Conference Center of COEC. In fact, our initial "Alumni College in the Rockies" in 1981 was the first off-campus travel-study experience offered by the Alumni Office; more than 400 have attended the Colorado program since then. Other alumni have joined Sherry and me on trips in the Patagonia, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Iceland, Hawaii, the Galapagos, and several of the national parks of the American West and Canadian Rockies.

Selected publications

• (2006) Silurian metavolcanic rocks of Vinalhaven Island, Penobscot Bay, Maine: Arc to back-arc transition?: Northeastern Geology & Environmental Sciences, v. 28, p. 342-357 (with Jen Newton '00, Erik Klemetti '99, Nate Cardoos '02, and David Hawkins at Denison Univ.)
• (2001; reprinted 2006) Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rocks in the Florissant region, central Colorado: Their topographc influence, past and present: Pikes Peak Research Station, Bulletin No. 5, 9 p.
• (2001) Paleoproterozoic metavolcanic rocks in the southern Front Range, lower Arkansas River Canyon, and northern Wet Mountains, central Colorado: Rocky Mountain Geology, v. 36, no. 2, p. 111-131.
  (with M. J. Folley, Williams '97, K.W. Wearn, Williams '98, and J.B. Noblett, Colorado College)
• (1999) Petrology and geochemistry of late-stage intrusions of the A-type, mid-Proterozoic Pikes Peak batholith, Colorado: implications for petrogenetic models: Precambrian Research, v. 98, p. 271-305.
  (by Diane Smith, Trinity Univ.; Jeff Noblett, Colorado College; R. A. Wobus, Dan Unruh (USGS), and 8 student co-authors including Rachel Beane (Williams '93).
• (1995) Volcanic expression of bimodal volcanism: The Cranberry Island-Cadillac Mountain complex, coastal Maine: Journal of Geology, v. 103, p. 301-311.
  (with Sheila Seaman, Univ. of Mass.; Bob Wiebe, F&M College; Naomi Lubick-then a student at Carleton; and Sam Bowring, MIT)
• (1990) Geochemistry of high-potassium rocks from the mid-Tertiary Guffey volcanic center, Thirtynine Mile Volcanic Field, Colorado: Geology, v. 18, p. 642-645.
  (with Stan Mertzman, F&M; Bruce Loeffler, Colorado College, and 9 student co-authors)
• (1988) Interinstitutional collaboration in undergraduate geological research-the consortium approach: Newsletter, Council on Undergraduate Reseach, v. 9, p. 32-35.
• (1985) Changes in the nomenclature and stratigraphic interpretation of Proterozoic metamorphic rocks, Tusas Mountains, north-central New Mexico: USGS Bulletin 1571, 19 p.
• (1981) Geologic map of the Denver 1° x 2° quadrangle, Colorado: USGS Map I-1163.
  (with Bruce Bryant and Laura McGrew of the USGS)
• (1978) Petrology of the Precambrian intrusive center at Lake George, Southern Front Range, Colorado: USGS Journal of Research, v. 6, p. 81-94.
  (with Bob Anderson, Williams Class of 1974)
• (1977) General geology and petrology of Precambrian crystalline rocks of the southern Tarryall region, Park and Jefferson Counties, Colorado: USGS Professional Paper 608-B, 77 p.
  (with Chuck Hawley of the USGS)