Movers & Shakers
MEMBER NEWS
HOOKED ON FOSSILS: GEOSCIENTIST HONOURED FOR OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTIONS TO HER PROFESSION It all started for Frances Hein, P.Geol., PhD , with a childhood collection of rocks and fossils. “I remember seeing my first igneous rocks along Lake Superior when our family went on vacation to Canada, and I collected rocks every day,” recalls Dr. Hein, whose contributions to the development and practice of Professional Geoscience have earned her the 2017 Canadian Professional Geoscientist Award from Geoscientists Canada . During Dr. Hein’s childhood in Joliet, Illinois, she hunted for fossils near abandoned coal mines, while her dad fished nearby. The mines had been turned into recreation areas. “My first year of university clinched it, when I took a course on geology that included plate tectonics. That
was a new theory at the time, taught by an oceanogra- pher in the Earth science department,” Dr. Hein says. “I was hooked.” Through her career, she has been a teacher, a mentor, an author, an expert advisor on oil sands and heavy oil deposits, and much more. The 2017 Canadian Professional Geoscientist Award, announced in June, recognizes Dr. Hein’s long-time career applying geological knowledge in the public interest, her work as a leading advocate for sound geology in oil and gas exploration and development, and her role modelling and mentoring. After completing her bachelor’s degree in geology from the University of Illinois in Chicago in 1972, she headed to Canada to study sedimentology at McMaster University in Hamilton, earning an M.Sc. and a PhD. In grad school, she met fellow rock hound Dr. Doug Cant, her future husband. The first two decades of Dr. Hein’s career were in academia, teaching at Dalhousie University in Halifax,
IT’S ABOUT THE ROCKS Dr. Frances Hein, P.Geol., (above and right) inspects pre-glacial gravels at Cypress Hills Inter provincial Park, which straddles the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan in the southeast and
southwest areas of the two provinces. -photos courtesy Dr. Frances Hein, P.Geol.
24 | PEG FALL 2017
Made with FlippingBook Learn more on our blog