Geologist
and UC Santa Cruz graduate alumnus Lisa D. White will deliver the
keynote address at UC Santa Cruz’s 43rd Graduate Commencement ceremony,
which will be held on the East Field at 4:00 p.m. on Friday, June 12,
2009.
Dr. White is
currently the Associate Dean of the College of Science and Engineering
as well as Professor of Geosciences at San Francisco State University
where she teaches courses in paleontology, the history of life, and
oceanography. A second generation San Franciscan, Dr. White, her
parents, and one of her siblings, are all alumni of SF State where she
was awarded a B.A. in Geology in 1984. Dr. White went on to
receive her Ph.D. in Earth Sciences from UC Santa Cruz in 1989. A
Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences and the Geological Society
of America, she is a micropaleontologist by training specializing in
fossil diatoms in the Monterey Formation and related siliceous deposits
around the Pacific Rim. Dr. White’s research has taken her all
over the world, to countries such as Egypt, Israel, Zimbabwe, Japan,
Russia, and Costa Rica.
Dr.
White coordinated the Minority Participation in the Earth Sciences
(MPES) Program at the U.S. Geological Survey from 1988-1995, supervised
the NASA Sharp-Plus program at San Francisco State in 1994, and she was
appointed to chair the Geological Society of America (GSA) Committee on
Minorities and Women in the Geosciences in 2000.
Throughout
her 20-year faculty and administrative career at SF State University,
Dr. White has been active in efforts to increase diversity in the Earth
sciences. She is the director and founder of San Francisco
State’s SF-ROCKS (Reaching Out to Communities and Kids with Science in
San Francisco), an NSF and NOAA funded project that engages public high
school students in the Bay Area. SF-ROCKS has allows students to
gain hands-on experiences in earth and environmental sciences through
research projects and training since 2001.
In
2005 Dr. White expanded her efforts to increase diversity in the field
of Earth sciences to New Orleans where she acted as a Visiting
Professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University
of New Orleans. During her time there, she helped to promote
opportunities for students of color to enter college as geoscience
majors.
In October
2008 Dr. White was named as the inaugural recipient of the Geological
Society of America’s Bromery Award for Minorities, an honor bestowed
upon a geoscientist who demonstrates the commitment and drive to help
minorities achieve success while maintaining a strong record of
research and service to the geologic community.
