Beverly A. Chomiak

Beverly Chomiak is interested in high-grade metamorphic rocks and metamorphosed ore deposits, particularly stratabound and volcanogenic massive sulfide deposits. Her specialty is studying fluid inclusions - the tiny bubbles in rocks that have trapped the fluids from which rock minerals are precipitated. She helps other faculty in many disciplines integrate GIS into their curricula.

She has coauthored several papers on the geochemistry of fluid inclusions in ore deposits and geothermal systems. Since coming to Connecticut College, her interest has turned to the local high-grade gneisses and schists that record a very complicated history of continental collision. She intends to use GIS to create a large scale map of the outcrop geology in the College arboretum in order to untangle the events that have repeatedly folded the rocks.

Chomiak also maintains the GIS computer laboratory and spends much of her time there building a geodatabase of resources in the Connecticut College Arboretum. With the help of many students in a number of environmental studies courses, large scale maps of vegetation, wetlands and vernal pools, glacial erratics, outcrops and stonewalls are currently being developed for use in a wide variety of courses, from ecology and geology to ethnobotany and ecological anthropology.

Chomiak teaches the following Environmental Studies courses: Introduction to Physical Geology (ES 115); Introduction to Environmental Geology (ES 120); and Introduction to Geographic Information Systems (ES 310).

She volunteers as a geology field guide for the Connecticut College Arboretum.

Visit the sites of the Department of Physics, Astronomy and Geophysics, and the Environmental Studies program.