NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY - FARGO, N D



DEPARTMENT OF GEOSCIENCES
NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY

ALUMNI NEWS: 2004 - 2007


Sarah Flaskerud (2004) works for Navteq in its Kansas City office.


Mike Nelson (2004) is living in Ramsey, MN and working at John Oliver and Assoc. as a land surveyor, on a two person GPS crew. The company is a civil engineering, land surveying, and land planning firm. He is planning on becoming a registered land surveyor for the state of Minnesota.


Aric Olsen (2004) graduated with his M.S. degree from Utah State University in Logan, UT. The title of his thesis was: "Discharge Monitoring, Chemical Characterization, and Source Identification of Springs Along the East Side of Southern Cache Valley, Utah". He reports that he enjoyed graduate school and Utah. He finally was able to get into rock climbing!!

Aric and his family moved back to Minnesota and he now works for ProSource Technologies in Coon Rapids as a Staff Hydrogeologist. Skylar will be in first grade in Fall, 2006 and Sunny, who was born two weeks before we moved to Utah, will be two years old in August, 2006.
Aric can be reached at a_aolsen@hotmail.com or tel 320-491-2882.


Peter Schlater (2004) is completing his M.S. degree at the Department of Geological Sciences, Wright State University in Dayton, OH. During part of his time there, he was a Teaching Assistant, for three sections of physical geology. He took courses such as Site Remediation and Hydrogeochemistry while carrying out his thesis research, which involved measuring the amount of bioremediation carried out in wetlands. He is currently employed by Brown and Caldwell and says " I am loving it. I am working as a geologist, getting a good mix of field work and office duties."


Justin Soberaski (2004) earned a M.S. degree in hydrogeology from Clemson University in December, 2007. Congratulations, Justin!


Chris Nelson (2005) is currently working at Northern Technologies Inc. in Fargo. He and his wife Kyja spent time living in Iceland before returning to Fargo. Kyja teaches film and video production at MSUM.


Jennifer Thorstad (2005) completed her M.S. degree in hydrogeology at Oklahoma State University. Jennifer's thesis was titled: "The Influence of Borehole Construction on LNAPL Thickness Measurements." She is now off to New Zealand! She writes: "I bought a one way plane ticket so who knows when I'll be back. It is a good time to be a geologist."


Stefanie (Seeger) Costa Rica (2005) is employed at the environmental consulting company Broadbent and Associates in the Las Vegas area. She is mostly responsible for air quality work which includes dust monitoring. She and Justin live in Henderson, NV.


Justin Costa Rica (2005) is currently working at the Yucca Mountain Project as a well-site geologist. He writes that some of his duties include field identification of geologic units and geologic logging of conventional and sonic core. He is in charge of the drill pad during drilling activities. Justin has been employed at the environmental consulting company Broadbent and Associates in the Las Vegas area as a Staff Geologist working primarily in the field. His responsibilities included collecting soil and groundwater samples, doing weekly maintenance on remediation systems, over-seeing drillers and doing lithlogs. He was also responsible for quarterly reports. He and Stefanie live in Henderson, NV.


Roark Franklund (2005) was accepted to graduate school in Louisiana, but then was deployed with the National Guard to Afghanistan. He and Abbey are now moving to Louisiana. Their son Reece was born in 2005.


Damion Knudsen (2005) is pursuing a M.S. degree in Environmental and Conservation Sciences at North Dakota State University in Fargo. His research interests are in Environmental Remediation. He is currently employed as a Research Scientist at the Energy and Environmental Resource Center in Grand Forks, ND.


Troy Kummer (2005) is pursuing his M.S. at New Mexico Tech in Soccoro, NM. He is enjoying his research and has a publication on it in the journal "Geology." Troy attended an international conference in Italy in 2007, which he greatly enjoyed. Meanwhile he continues to fit in some climbing whenever he gets a chance. Troy can be reached at tkummer@nmt.edu.


Abigail (Marohl) Franklund (2005) earned a M.S. degree at the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks. She and Roark are moving to Louisiana, and are very proud parents of Reece, born 2005.


Dan Stephney (2005) is employed at Navteq in Fargo.


Chad Weisenburger (2005) completed his M.S. degree at University of Texas - Austin. He, his wife Halona and their new daughter Isabelle have moved to Tyler, TX, where Chad is employed by EOG Resources. Tyler is a resort community on Lake Palestine. He writes that "the oil companies are lining up to recruit" and encourages geology seniors to consider the petroleum industry for employment.


Michael Wright (2005) is pursuing a M.S. degree at University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. He can be reached at wrightm@uwm.edu


Jason Triplett graduated from NDSU with an Earth Science Education major om 2005. In Fall, 2007, he was accepted into the Masters of Science program in Environmental and Conservation Science (ECS) at NDSU. He continues teaching at Richland County School in Colfax, ND.

Nick Schmitz received a geology minor from NDSU in December, 2006. He is currently pursuing a M.S. degree in Land Use Economics at the University of Nebraska - Omaha.
He can be reached at UNO Real Estate Research Center, University of Nebraska-Omaha, Roskens Hall 515 D, Omaha, NE 68182-0048. Tel. (402) 554-2453.


Dan Weihrauch (2006) is employed at Northern Technologies Inc. in Fargo.


Todd Morken (2006) graduated in December, 2006, and is now pursuing a graduate degree at University of Nevada-Reno. He can be reached at morkent@unr.nevada.edu.

Reuben Panchol (2006) graduated in December, 2006. He and his wife Betty Adau Majak are very proud of their son Duot Reuben Panchol, who was born in 2007. Reuben was employed by Navteq in Fargo, before joining the firm of another NDSU alum, Lance Loken (1985), Western Plains Consulting, Inc. WPC is an environmental, regulatory and natural resources consulting firm based in Bismarck, North Dakota.

Cody VanderBusch (2006) graduated in December, 2006. Cody joined the North Dakota Oil and Gas Division (OGD) in their Dickinson office as a field inspector.

Nicky Zurn (2007) graduated in May, 2007, and is currently working at Navteq in Fargo.

Andrew Podoll (2007) graduated in May, 2007. He is currently pursuing a M.S. degree in Geology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.


Michael Newbrey (2007) received his Ph.D. in Biology under the direction of Allan Ashworth. His research interests focused on the growth of contemporary and fossil fish. He and Jennifer (also Ph.D. Biology 2007) are now off to post-doctoral positions at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada. His web page is www.ualberta.ca/~mnewbrey/ .

Rebecca Mink (2007) received her M.S. degree in Biology, under the direction of Allan Ashworth. She is now happily employed by the North Dakota Geological Survey in Bismarck. Her research interests are in dinosaurs.

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