Frank S. Spear
|
NEW: - Graduate Student Funding OpportunitiesI enjoy teaching a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate courses including mineralogy, petrology, structural geology, field seminars, phase petrology, geochemistry of groundwater systems, and computer applications in geology. My teaching goals, whether at the graduate or undergraduate level, are to teach the student to analyze and understand different types of problems while helping to build confidence in his or her own abiliy to solve these problems.
My research group has been working on developing new techniques for the interpretation of metamorphic petrogenesis and especially mineral reactions and chemical zonation. The goal of this work is to construct pressure-temperature-time histories that can be used to interpret the tectonic evolution of a terrane. We have applied these techniques to areas in the Alps, New England, southern Chile, the Mojave desert, British Columbia, the Adirondacks of New York, and the Caledonides of Norway.
Current field projects are underway in
More details on our "Current Research" page....
Software and Publications
I have published a book on metamorphic phase equilibria and several computer programs to perform calculations of interest to metamorphic petrologists. Click below to link to pages describing these:
Selected Recent Research Papers are listed on our "Recent Publications" page
