June 4, 2025 - Party at Dr. Czajka and Dr. Atkin's House, Farewell to Dr. Stephen, half day of biking...

Doug and Rachel hosted a Chicago Style Hot Dog extravaganza party at their house, celebrating the summer, their recent wedding, and unfortunately the departure of Dr. Daniel Stephen from UVU. Debjani and I had a great time, but I wished the night could have lasted longer. 

Dan was the last remaining faculty member that was on my hiring committee in 2011. Other faculty included Dr. Bill Dinklage (now a Professor at Santa Barbara Community College), Dr. Jim Callison (recently retired), and Joel Bradford (also recently retired). Either Dan or Bill was the search chair, but I cannot recall exactly. One of our admin's Kellie Hancock (still at UVU) was the fifth member of the committee and of course Dr. Bunds was the newly elected Department Chair (Mike's still here too, hopefully for some years to come).  

From the start of my time at UVU, Dan and his ex-wife Catherine were very welcoming to me. I recall joining them and Danny and Renae for a music festival in Park City before my first semester began. Debjani and I shared many a bowl of Gumbo at their historical pioneer home in Alpine over several New Year's Eves (usually after Dan's epic drive back from visiting family in Arkansas). We even got to experience the opening of and taste a very old and peaty whiskey that Dan had inherited from his grandfather. Of course, the first couple years at UVU, while Debjani was mostly located elsewhere, I spent most Friday afternoons and evenings scrambling to digest Dan's paper of the week and then attending the UVU 'Gilbert Club' at Iggy's Sports Bar (later it was moved to Callie's). It was a wonderful chance to get some mentorship from Dan, as I struggled to teach my first few years. A place to interface with students, Dan's cephalopod colleague Kevin, and hang out with fellow department newbies Alessandro Zanazzi and sometimes Suzanne Walther (now at SDU). While the academic papers were rarely discussed in depth at the meetings, they were always carefully chosen by Dan, starting the year off with a classic by GK Gilbert himself and then week by week choosing articles that represented interests across the department. Sometimes, I felt that Dan was choosing papers to specifically call me or some other faculty member out and other times it was just the latest GSA Today article. 

Dan's weekly emails, inviting everyone to Gilbert Club were epic, you would always learn something and then there were the birthday's of historical figures and record numbers of p.p.p.s's 

I learned several things from Dan that I carry forth today:

1. When on committee work and establishing departmental guidelines and policy - ALWAYS speak back to the higher level policies rather than needlessly specify details within those policies. The reason for this is simple, we have no control over changes in those policies and we don't want to have to change our policies every time something changes in another policy. 

2. Service to the discipline is valued, even at UVU. Dan was a regular contributor to NAGT committees while I was a pretenure faculty and I saw the dedication he put in there and while we don't have a lot of time for this type of service with our teaching loads, I try to do my part. 

3. Stay rigorous and maintain high standards. Dan shared personal stories about how shocked he was in graduate school when he was expected to just know things that had been taught in his undergraduate program and as such, he makes sure that our students know all the basics relative to historical geology, paleontology, mapping, etc. While, I tend to hold looser assignments in my classes (less test focused), I make sure that all of my classes, especially classes for majors, address the fundamentals in geomorphology, earthquake science, GIS, etc. I know that our UVU graduates outperform their counterparts largely because of the standards that faculty like Dan set in the classroom. 

I am going to miss Dan's presence dearly and his leadership on the RTP committee will also be missed. It's admirable that Dan will get to dedicate more time to his family life in Arkansas. I hope he still has the opportunity to share his knowledge with others interested in Earth Science there as well. 

Now Alessandro, Weihong, and I are basically next in line to be the department's old guard with only Dr. Bunds and Dr. Cadet more senior. But the good news is that we potentially have another 20+ years of career ahead of us and we have a great group of younger faculty and recently tenured faculty, so I am sure there will be lots of memories, learning, and experiences to be shared among ourselves and with our students. 

I didn't do any real work today, but I did do a somewhat epic gravel ride with plans to eventually turn this into a circumnavigation of Mt. Timpanogos. This ride was 42 miles and just under 2000 ft of climbing and I managed the effort very well (no post effort cramping, no nap required, and alcohol was even consumed without negative effects). The planned goal ride will be about 55-60 miles with more like 4500 feet of climbing, so I will do another week or two of training before finding the optimal weekday to give it a go!