By Elizabeth Gierlowski-Kordesch
Argentina Blog, Sept. 15, 2014
As a geology professor from Ohio University working in the field of limnogeology, I have been invited to Argentina through the Fulbright Specialist Program to teach students about the field of limnogeology—the study of sediments of modern lakes and the sedimentary record of lakes preserved in the geologic record—at the University of Buenos Aires. I also will do research on Triassic lakes in western Argentina with colleagues at CONICET (National Research and Technology Council of Argentina).
This blog will document my work and travels in Argentina over my six-week stay, starting Sept. 15, 2014.
My first order of business was to visit the University of Buenos Aires campus in the northern part of the city and coordinate classrooms for lectures and microscope work in the Geological Sciences Department.
Elizabeth Gierlowski-Kordesch outside the Geology office at the University of Buenos
Aires.
The geology classrooms are situated on one side of a HUGE building on campus. The department entry is there behind me with the white sign above the double doors.
The classroom with the petrographic microscopes is here, and we will look at thin sections (thin slivers of rocks mounted on glass slides) here. These thin sections contain ancient lake sediment turned into rock and show different fabrics and fossils useful in interpreting depositional systems.
Dr. Cecilia Benavente
I am teaching this course with one of my colleagues from CONICET, a newly minted Ph.D. from the University of Buenos Aires, Dr. Cecilia Benavente. We spent the next few days organizing the short course on limnogeology. These are the types of courses that graduate students take for course credit toward their degree. We have about twenty students already signed up.
Here is Dr. Cecilia working on the short course with me in our hotel room. We managed to escape the hotel for dinner on most days. Buenos Aires has an eclectic range of restaurants from all over the world. We managed to eat Armenian and Argentine food my first days here. Remember Argentinians are famous for the grilling of meat to perfection!
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