Citation by Lily Pfeifer-Johnson
Dr. Lynn Soreghan is awarded the 2024 Sloss Award in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the field of sedimentology and paleoclimatology, and dedicated service to GSA. Her research themes have transformed our understanding of climate on an Earth with glacial-interglacial variability, tectonic disruption, and voluminous atmospheric dust, and she has pioneered novel approaches to detect such climates in deep time. Dr. Soreghan’s research is of broad interest, evinced by a robust international and collaborative funding record, >100 peer-reviewed publications, and abundant invited speaking engagements. She is also celebrated for her dedication to mentoring the next generation of geoscientists, and for her service to university and professional communities. Dr. Soreghan, a GSA Fellow, has been an active member of GSA for >30 years. Her contributions to the society include serving as an Editor (GSA Bulletin), committee member (Sedimentary Geology Division), frequent reviewer (GSA journals), and convener/panelist for numerous GSA field trips/sessions.
Response by Gerilyn S. Soreghan
Thank you Lily, for your very kind words, and for championing this nomination, and thank you to my nominators and the GSA committee. Many of my mentors are former Sloss awardees, so I’m honored, very overwhelmed, and feeling exceptionally lucky.
When I began graduate school in the late 80s, teasing apart controls on stratigraphic sequences—sea level versus tectonics—was all the rage. I was lucky to study with the late great Bill Dickinson at the University of Arizona. Bill took a dim view of an exclusive eustatic control on stratal patterns, and so he sent me to the 1989 Chapman Conference on Sea Level Change, and I was star struck because Larry Sloss was there, and the main thing I remember about Larry was that his broad smile put me at ease.
I owe huge thanks to Bill for his clear-eyed mentorship, and to my other graduate advisors—Andy Cohen, Peter Coney, Clem Chase, and Judy Parrish, whose encouragement I cherish. Judy urged me to think about the role of climate on stratigraphy, which I took to heart and included in my dissertation—one of my chapters (which was also my first publication) was about climate controls on the dust that dirtied my pristine Paleozoic carbonates of southern Arizona. I’m not sure I ever told Judy this, but Bill’s marginalia in the draft of that chapter read—and this should be imagined in a booming Bill Dickinson voice which I cannot imitate—“Tectonics paints the broad brushstrokes, and climate provides the flute music.” And it turns out that I enjoy both brushstrokes and flute music.
My path towards the U of A and Bill was forged during my undergraduate years at UCLA. I grew up in the sprawling suburbs of LA—the concrete jungle of Reseda—but benefitted from parents who took us on excursions to the nearby mountains, desert, and seashore. I credit these experiences with my guesstimate to major in geology—I declared having never taken a class in it. But I was lucky, because I found UCLA’s close-knit department, and Ray Ingersoll. Ray’s inspired teaching caused me to detour from what I thought would be a future in metamorphic petrology towards the comparative grunge of sediments.
Being a native Valley Girl, I wouldn’t have known a limestone if it had gagged me—carbonates just don’t occur on active margins—so once I arrived in Tucson, I was lucky to learn from amazing fellow students. Chief amongst them was my office mate, Kate Giles, who taught me everything I know about carbonates, Wisconsin accents, and—ironically perhaps—wine.
As fate would dictate, I ended up at the University of Oklahoma—the midst of the notorious Dust Bowl. I’ll admit I struggled initially with the apparent dearth of geological wonders in the Southern Plains compared with Southern California and southern Arizona, but I soon learned this was an ignorant view: Oklahoma has preserved within its borders not just one but two old plate boundaries, happily covered by a lot of dust, from both near- and deep-time.
At OU I’ve been lucky to mentor over 35 hard-working graduate students and many undergraduates, who’ve endured my often overbearing nature with patience and poise. I’m especially grateful to many outstanding PhDs and post-docs— Lily Pfeifer, Dustin Sweet, Alicia Bonar, Steve Adams, Sohini Sur, Young Ji Joo, Mehrdad Sardar Abadi, Austin McGlannan, Kristen Marra, and Leslie Keiser. I’m also thankful to OU Geosciences, and to collaborators such as Doug Elmore, Megan Elwood Madden, and Shannon Dulin.
I’ve been fortunate to learn from informal exchanges with many luminaries of sedimentary geology, including James Lee Wilson, Phil Heckel, Pete DeCelles, Isabel Montanez, Lee Suttner, Abhijit Basu, Tim Lawton, Kathy Benison, Art Saller, Sam Johnson, Margie Chan, Kathie Marsaglia, Majie Fan, and so many others—thank you all.
Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my family, for their enduring encouragement: My dear parents, Gerald and Susan Andrews, seven siblings, children, extended family, and especially my husband Michael—for his unwavering support, and perpetual collaboration.
It takes a village, and a lot of luck. Thank you all very sincerely.