Kurt Friehauf - Curriculum VitaeKurt Friehauf

Associate Professor of Geology
Dept. of Physical Sciences
Boehm Science Building Room 135
Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
Kutztown, PA  19530
Tel: 610-683-4446
FAX: 610-683-1352

We are all partners in a quest.
The essential questions have no answers.
Questions unite people.
Answers divide them.

Elie Wiesel - 1986 Nobel Peace Prize
Giant Mountain, Adirondacks, NY 2006
Teaching
Courses I teach and philosophy of the importance of undergraduate research in education
surveying pit with Sarah Tindall
Research
Applying science to answer questions whose answers are not in the textbooks... yet!
Nobel School visit 2006
Service
Science outreach, geology club, and various committees I'm on that help students
http://www.creativeglazes.com/images/white-clock-1.jpg
Daily schedule
When and where to find me
Kurt Friehauf - Curriculum Vitae
Curriculum Vitae
(resume)
Kurt on Lake Geneva, Switzerland 2006
Personal stuff
Why would anyone want to become a geologist? Travel pictures, favorite quotes, books, hobbies, recommended links, etc.

Courses taught

Mineralogy
Mineralogy
How to identify minerals and the chemistry of how minerals form
(photo: Sterling Hill zinc mine)

Optical Mineralogy
Optical Mineralogy
Using microscopes to study mineralogy and applying a little mineral chemistry to deduce geological processes
(photo: Nyco wollastonite mine)

Petrology
Igneous/Metamorphic Petrology
Studying the origins of rocks that form by cooling of hot magmas/lavas (igneous rocks) and rocks that form by recrystallization and chemical reaction at high temperature and pressure (metamorphic rocks)
(photo: Adirondack Mnts.)

Geology of National Parks
Geology of National Parks
The stories of the rocks that you walk on when you go on vacation
(photo: Canyon de Chelly, AZ)

Environmental Geology
Environmental Geology
Geology related to environmental science with an emphasis on practical experience in the field
(photo: soil sampling near Palmerton, PA)

Hydrogeology
Hydrogeology
Geology related to environmental science with an emphasis on practical experience in the field
(photo: bailing from monitoring well)

Senior Seminar
Senior Seminar in Geology
Synthesis of all of the geology courses in the program through discussions of papers published in the professional scientific journals, also includes group research project
(photo: measuring pH, etc. in well)

Physical Geology
Physical Geology and
Intro to Geology
Survey of the geological sciences for science and non-science majors, respectively
(photo: viewing kiln at cement plant)

Structural Geology
Structural Geology
Studying how stress deforms rock to form folds and faults, how that applies to engineering, and plate tectonic theory
(photo: measuring RQD in drill core at drill rig testing rock strength)

(now taught by Dr. Sarah Tindall)

Travels with students

±Week long trips
China - Summer 2008 (Beijing + Qinghai)
Costa Rica - Winter 2007-2008 (volcano and beach tour)
Adirondacks - Autumn 2007
China - Summer 2005 (Beijing)
Adirondacks - Autumn 2005
China - Summer 2004 (Beijing and Inner Mongolia)
Adirondacks - Autumn 2004
Adirondacks - Spring 2002

Adirondacks - Spring 2000
GSA meetings
Harrisburg, PA - March 2006
Salt Lake City, UT - October 2005
Washington, D.C. - March 2004
Seattle, WA - November 2003
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada - March 2003
Denver, CO - November 2001
Reno, NV - November 2000

Friehauf's Book of the Semester Club

Each semester, I choose a geology-based book that I recommend to my students.  Although I do not require my students to read these books, there are valuable extra credit points available to students who can demonstrate they read, remember, and understand the material.  (note:  links are to original publishers, but you can find a better deal if you shop around)

Undergraduate Research - an important part of education

I am a strong advocate of using undergraduate research projects to help students pull together the knowledge they learn in their many classes.  Earning a degree in geology requires students to take a whole bunch of very different science courses, ranging from classes on how volcanoes erupt, to how beaches erode, to how earthquake vibrations travel through the earth, to fossil identification, and much, much more.  Unfortunately, in spite of every professor's attempts to tie what students learn in each class to the subject at hand, the links between these subjects commonly just shows up as a line or two in a notebook. DOING research requires a person to pull this knowledge together to solve a problem really helps build a strong fabric of knowledge gained in all of those science classes.
Because research pursues the answers to questions with no pat answer, research projects also teach students that there is not always a single, obvious, correct answer to a given problem, and research successes help build each student's self confidence.  Students doing independent research with me work on projects including:

A nice four-year plan for any undergraduate student (by the Career Services Staff at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania)

Research projects

China research project
China research
http://faculty.kutztown.edu/friehauf/grasberg.jpg
Ertsberg research (Indonesia)
Mid-Atlantic iron oxide research project
Iron oxide ore research
Hydrogeology research project
Hydrogeology research

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Publications
(see below for most recent)


My research integrates extensive field mapping data and petrographic work with thermodynamic modeling to evaluate metasomatic chemical reaction paths. My current research projects focus on:
  1. origins of the giant rare earth element deposit at Bayan Obo (Inner Mongolia, China),
  2. evolution of the Ertsberg diorite-hosted porphyry mineralization (West Papua, Indonesia),
  3. geological factors affecting groundwater flow and cave formation near a local limestone quarry, and
  4. origins of the belt of magnetite deposits in eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey.



At Bayan Obo, we are looking at chemical variations in the limestone rocks that host the orebodies to see if there is evidence for influence by carbonatite magmas (either as orthomagmatic lava flows and intrusions, or due to hydrothermal activity related to carbonatite intrusions at depth).  This work is in collaboration with Dr. Xiao Rongge at the China University of Geosciences in Beijing.  I brought three Kutztown University undergraduate students to China with me in the summer of 2004 to aid in this work.

At Ertsberg, my field mapping (1999-2002) revealed the system to be hosted by several igneous phases that alternate in time with multiple structural and hydrothermal events.  I am currently refining that work through petrographic studies aimed at constraining the fluid chemistry, temperature, and pressure.  In collaboration with Dr. Spencer Titley and Stacie Gibbins (University of Arizona), I am also studying the origins of the giant Grasberg porphyry copper deposit in the same district.  Although the Grasberg and Ertsberg porphyry deposits occur within 2 km of one another and apparently formed within 100,000 years of one another in relation to similar igneous rocks, metasomatism around the Grasberg center is much more intense and widespread.  The ultimate goal of this project is to draw a comparison of physiochemical conditions between these two contrasting systems to identify some of the factors that affect how porphyry hydrothermal systems evolve.

I am also investigating, along with a crew of Kutztown University undergraduate researchers 
The groundwater flow and cave formation research is in collaboration with Dr. Lane Schultz of the Berks Products Corporation and Dr. Sarah Tindall.  We are comparing hydrologic data such as changes in groundwater table  and groundwater chemistry (temperature, pH, etc.) in a field of monitoring wells with rock types and fracture patterns mapped in the adjacent quarry.  Our goal is to determine the relative importance of different types of fractures, the abundance of fractures, and the chemistry of the limestone rocks in affecting cave formation and groundwater flow in the area.

The focus of the magnetite (iron) deposits of the eastern U.S. research is to determine if the  Proterozoic magnetite deposits scattered throughout eastern Pennsylvania, northern New Jersey, and southern New York are related to one another and, if they are, learn what causes the subtle variations in their geology.   These old magnetite deposits may be similar in origin to the much younger iron deposits that occur in contact aureoles of plutons intruding the Triassic/Jurassic rift basins nearby, which Rose et al. (1985) proposed to be the result of  hydrothermal activity related to regional fluid flow of non-magmatic (basinal? evaporative?) brines.  The widespread scale of the many small magnetite Proterozoic deposits, their relationship to hydrothermally altered wall rocks, and the spatially systematic variation in this alteration and the host rock types suggests the Proterozoic deposits are related to the same general geologic event and that different deposits formed at different depths.  This work is in collaboration with Dr. Robert C. Smith II (Pennsylvania Geological Survey) and Richard Volkert (New Jersey Geological Survey).

My Ph.D. research combined field mapping with detailed petrographic studies, investigations of the carbon-oxygen isotope systematics in carbonate rocks, and irreversible thermodynamic reaction path modeling to document metasomatic reactions in carbonate rocks by fluids given off during the late stages of the crystallization of felsic magmas (i.e. porphyry copper deposits). These aqueous solutions are analogous to those recorded in active geothermal systems in volcanic arcs of the circumpacific (e.g. Pinatubo Philippines and White Island New Zealand).  The exposures in the mine at Superior Arizona provided remarkable access to the hydrothermal system there, allowing detailed study of 1) the geology of carbonate-hosted massive sulfide replacement ores, 2) factors affecting the relative sulfur, metal, and chlorine budgets metaliferous solutions upon reaction with wall rocks, and 3) the evaluation of stable isotopic tracers in determining fluid flow paths in carbonate rocks.

Most recent publications  (names in italics indicate student co-authors)


Service activities

A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.
- Sir Barnett Cocks

Rittenhouse Gap geophysics project
Kutztown University Undergraduate Research Committee
(chair and webmeister)
helping fund student research projects - a very good cause!
gaging Saucony Creek
Women in Science Project
(P.I.)
Program that estabslishes mentoring relationships between women interested in science and funds a speaker series that is open to anyone in the public who's interested in science!
Kutztown University Geology Club - Poas volcano - Costa Rica
Geology Club
of Kutztown University
(co-advisor with
Dr. Sarah Tindall)
(photo: Poás Volcano, Costa Rica)
photos from our
Costa Rica trip!
Kutztown University Outdoors Club
Kutztown University
Outdoors Club

(faculty advisor)
Why wait until retirement to go out and experience life?!
http://faculty.kutztown.edu/friehauf/tiny_early_learning_center_01.jpg
Science outreach - several little science projects with pre-college students I do in my spare time
Zeta Tau Alpha
Zeta Tau Alpha Sorority (faculty advisor)
Possibly the most philanthropic sorority on campus!
LAS Curriculum Committee
Liberal Arts and Science Curriculum Committee
(chair and webmeister) - powerless figurehead charged with running meetings, signing papers, and creating + maintaining the website
Society of Economic Geologists
Society of Economic Geologists
One of the organizations of scientists who find the metals we all use every day
Student Affairs Council
Freshman text committee
Liberal Arts and Sciences Freshman Text Committee
selecting the annual book which all freshmen read - this gives students a common intellectual experience for discussion
(this year's recommendation was censored by the assistant dean
to protect students from ideas)
see also the NCAC site


Why would anyone want to become a geologist?

Geology is largely for science-loving people who like travel, nature, and working with diverse people.  I've really enjoyed my career as a geologist because it gets me out of the office and puts me in strange new environments with little mysteries to solve.  Geological problems require me to really look carefully at things, bring together my knowledge of many other fields of science, and analyze the data in a logical and creative way.  Creativity is an essential facet of science that many people overlook!  Personally, I'm particularly attracted to the practical aspects of applied geology that has direct value to people, but geologists also do fascinating research on fundamental processes. 

In addition to scientific adventure
, my geologic studies allow me to work with a wide variety of people from different cultures, many of whom I would never have otherwise encountered, and seen places relatively few folks back home have seen.  I believe that a lot of the conflict between people in the world is due to a lack of understanding of each other's viewpoints.  Ignorance allows us to think of strangers as something less than as human as ourselves and so causes us to become callous, uncaring, disdainful, and even hateful.  Traveling and meeting people in person helps destroy that ignorance, enables us to see people as more than simple stereotypes or abstract, symbolic icons on a map, and so paves the way for new friendships and opportunities for productive cooperation.  I have yet to visit a place inhabited solely by monsters - most people are pretty cool, although there are certainly a few jerks everywhere you go. 

I hope that the following section begins to illustrate that point.

plate tectonic map of the world
Travels (click on country of interest)  (well,...sorry, it'll work once I map the image)

Additional websites I've created for general education of people surfing the web

Personal stuff

fermenting brown ale
Home brewing
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Playing violin
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Origami
(but I'm no Robert Lang, yet!)
American flag
Political views

Backpacking



Favorite quotes:
Recommended authors and books:

Recommended links:


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