The Stephen F. Austin State University Board of Regents met on the SFA campus for a regularly scheduled meeting on Monday, November 2nd.  The Board of Regents had previously requested that Dr. Wesley Brown, head of the Geology Department, review the contributions made to the Department by the East Texas Geological Society.  When the Regents saw the level of support from the ETGS, they asked Dr. Brown to invite members of the Society to the Board of Regents meeting to be recognized for the support we, as a Society, have provided to SFA.

Last year, in November, Josh Rosenfeld spoke to us about the isolation of the Gulf of Mexico from the world’s oceans and the subsequent drawdown of the waters in the Gulf that resulted from that isolation (you can review the slides from his talk on our website).  He based his hypothesis on:
 

• the excavation of deep canyons across contemporary continental shelves and slopes – like the Yoakum, St. Landry, Chicontepec channels,
• the sudden and thick deposition of thick, widespread, high net-sands in the deep Gulf Basin hundreds of kilometers beyond the contemporaneous shelf edge
• salt deposited in the Tertiary Veracruz Basin
• a regional unconformity in the carbonate-dominated eastern Gulf Basin

The GCAGS in Houston last week was a great convention.  There were a lot of good talks, and the occasional blooper, but for the most part, it was a great opportunity to learn more about what was going on in the scientific aspect of our business.  The students from Stephen F. Austin University were well represented with 12 posters that were presented at the convention.  That was more than any other university (the next closest was University of Houston with 10 posters).  A big thanks to our Society for helping sponsor these students and professors who attended with them.