Margaret Cook participated in Celebration of Learning

2012 May 7

More than 75 Augustana students from all academic areas shared their advanced research projects on Saturday, May 5, at the Celebration of Learning. This on-campus research symposium annually gives students an opportunity to show off their academic accomplishments to their families and the Augustana community.

Among the students involved:

Margaret Cook, a senior from Wauconda, Ill., majoring in geology. The research was titled Investigation of Crustal Contamination in the Palisades Intrusive Sheet, Fort Lee, New Jersey. The incipient rifting of the supercontinent Pangaea facilitated the emplacement of the eastern North America basalt provinces during the Mesozoic. A generally uniform geochemical signature of high-titanium quartz-normative tholeiitic basalt magma is consistent throughout these flows. Previous research has concluded that these provinces were largely unchanged by crystal fractionation or crustal contamination and were directly extruded from shallow undepleted or enriched homogeneous mantle sources. However, a petrographic investigation of the Palisades intrusive diabase sheet has revealed unique magmatic differentiation features best explained by regional contamination, magma chamber recharge, and at least two pulses of heterogeneous parent magma. The goal of this investigation is to analyze the extent of contamination within the Palisades sheet using radiogenic isotope data. The identification and dating of these geochemical reversals were performed by strontium isotope data analyses on four samples. The results of these analyses are currently under evaluation by the accomplishment of final measurements.

Celebration participants presented their research through a poster display or an oral presentation. Many students expounded on the results of their Senior Inquiry, a multiple-term research project required for most academic programs. Other students shared honors capstone projects or student-faculty research findings. Because of the advanced level of research involved, most of the presenters are upperclass students.

Anne Earel and Stefanie Bluemle, Augustana reference librarians and the event's co-directors, said the Celebration of Learning provided an outlet for students to showcase their accomplishments.

Presentations topics varied greatly and included anthropology, biology, physics, geography, gender studies, theater and more.