Gary Girty Awarded the President's Top 25 Award

Thirteen years ago, San Diego State President Stephen L. Weber and his wife Susan began the "Top 25 Awards" at SDSU to celebrate the extraordinary contributions of faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community members.

This year one of the recipients of this prestigious award is Dr. Gary H. Girty from the Department of Geological Sciences. Gary is honored because of his work with the general education course Planet Earth (Geol100). One of his major accomplishments with this blended online/lecture based course is the digital textbook written by Gary. It contains many interactive illustrations, an online syllabus containing specific learning outcomes goals, a set of practice exams (study guides), and video lectures (screencasts) covering material in each of the 13 chapters covered during the semester.

Girty joined the department in 1984. Since then he has supervised the successful completion of 61 M.S. and 79 B.S. theses, and has published 67 papers, books, and guidebooks, and over 76 abstracts the vast majority of them with student co-authors. He was selected for the San Diego State University Senate Excellence In Teaching Award – Recognizing Excellence As A Teacher-Scholar for 2006-2007. In 2002-2003 he was awarded the Outstanding Faculty and Staff Award by the Mortar Board at SDSU, and has been selected as the most influential professor by the department’s top graduating senior 7 times. He has served as the Vice-Chair (2005), Chair (2006), and Past-Chair (2007) of the Cordilleran Section, Geological Society of America. He is currently serving his 9th year as the Chair of the department.

Girty’s research program focuses on (1) understanding how plutonic rock weathers, (2) how fault zone architecture develops, and (2) the tectonic development of the SW Cordillera. Since 2002 he has received a total of $124,281 in external and internal funding, and has published 15 papers in journals and books and 13 abstracts all with student co-authors. He also was one of 6 editors on the GSA Special Paper 347 honoring the career of Gordon Gastil, and was one of 2 editors of the Pacific Section SEPM volume honoring the career of Patrick Abbott.