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Connors to Give Pritchard Professorship Inaugural Lecture at W&L

Christopher D. Connors, professor of geology at Washington and Lee University, will give the William E. Pritchard III Professorship Inaugural Lecture on Thursday, March 14, at 8 p.m. in Science Center 214.

The title of his talk is “The Importance of Fault-related Folding in Deformation of the Earth’s Crust.”  It is free and open to the public.

Connors plans on showing examples from around the world to demonstrate how fundamental the relationship is between faulting and folding in the upper crust. He said that he “will show that consideration of these processes allows for a better understanding of the subsurface geometry and kinematics of map-scale structures.” He will also show results from a program that he wrote to model these structures.

Connors joined the W&L faculty in 1999. He was head of the department from 2009 to 2010 and from 2011 to the present. He has been a visiting professor at the Universitat de Barcelona, Spain, in 2010-2011 and Universidad de Oviedo, Spain, in 2003.

He co-authored “Seismic Interpretation of Contractional Fault-related Fold” (2005). Connors also co-authored nine peer-reviewed journal articles, including “Structure of the Offshore Niger Delta” (2009) and “A Velocity Description of Shear Fault-Bend Folding” (2006).

He has co-authored 38 talks at national/international meetings, and given 21 invited talks (seven international) to academia and industry.

Connors said, “Much of my own research has involved students, with 23 W&L student co-authors on abstracts of talks and five student co-authors of published manuscripts. All of my graduated honors theses students have subsequently completed or are completing graduate degrees in geology.”

Connors holds a B.S. from Pennsylvania State University, an M.S. from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University.

News Contact:
Julie Cline
News Writer
jcline@wlu.edu
540-458-8954