Anna Ternova '18

Bachelor of Science in Geology
  

Anna Ternova was accepted to Stockton on a Dean's Scholarship. 

Her sophmore year, she took a Physical Geology course with Dr. Michael Hozik, Emeritus Professor of Geology, which rekindled her passion with the environment and prompted her change of major from Nursing to Geology.

During her sophomore year, she spent her first research project drilling out rock cores in Massachusetts. The project "Paleomagnetic results from maficigneous rocks associated with Holyoke Basalt" she presented at the Geological Society of America (GSA) Northeastern Section Meeting in 2016. 

In March 2017, Ternova was awarded the Angelo Tagliacozzo Memorial Geological Scholarship by the American Institute of Professional Geologist, as well as the Undergraduate Student Research Grant by the Rocky Mountain Section of the Geological Society of America for her summer research project on mapping the 200 million year old Rierdon formation in the Bridger Mountains of southwestern Montana. That summer, Ternova spent three weeks in the Bridger Mountains with Dr. Jeffrey Webber, Assistant Professor of Geology, and Geology student, Tim Shamus, collecting 30 samples of the Rierdon formation throughout the area in order to test the hypotheses concerning the way that deformation is concentrated into fault zones. For each sample collected, they cut, polished and digitally scanned three perpendicular faces. By analyzing the shapes and locations of over 100 grains of ooids per face from the digital images, the three-dimensional properties of deformation recorded in the samples was determined.  

This past March, Ternova attended her third Geological Society of America (GSA) conference to present the research on "Off-fault distortional strain analysis within the oolitic Rierdon formation of the Helena salient, southwest Montana: implications for the mechanics of deformation and strain localization."  The results indicated that the formation was highly localized within very discrete and narrow fault zones at the crustal level exposed in the Bridger mountains during the formation of the North American Cordillera roughly 75 million years ago.

During her tenure at Stockton, Ternova was a member of the Geology Club for three years and served as club treasurer for the 2017-2018 academic year. She graduated Magna Cum Laude this May.