• Saturday, November 22, 2025
    • 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
    • Dick's Primal Kitchen, 4905 S.E. Woodstock Blvd, Portland, OR

    Now meeting at Dick's Primal Kitchen, 4905 S.E. Woodstock Blvd, Portland. 

    DO YOU HAVE A ROCK YOU WANT TO BRING TO SHOW-&-TELL?

    Feel free to bring an interesting rock, mineral, or fossil to bring to show-and-tell! No scientific knowledge is required, but it's always fun to discuss:

    WHERE DID YOU FIND IT? e.g. "my grandmother's yard" or "Wyoming" or "Clackamette Park" or even GPS coordinates on a map.

    WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOU? Our group uses a scientific lens to look at the world, but the natural world has a lot of meanings to different people, so this might include:

    • "This is the quartz crystal that started my love of geology at age 5!"
    • "This cobble has special meaning to my fellow tribal members."
    • "This 3 billion year-old fossil inspires awe every time I hold it!"
    • "This is one of my field samples from my research last summer."
    • Saturday, December 06, 2025
    • 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
    • West Hills Unitarian Fellowship

    Kick off the holidays with your GSOC friends!  Registration will begin on November 16th.  The event is free, but we'd like to know how many folks will be there.

    GSOC will celebrate the holidays with a potluck dinner, a slide show, and music at West Hills Unitarian Fellowship at 8470 SW Oleson Rd, Portland 97223 in Southwest Portland.

    Meat and non-alcoholic beverages will be provided by GSOC. You are welcome to bring along your favorite beverage (including wine if you'd like). 

    Attendees should bring the following types of dishes for serving about 6 people:

    Last name ending in A-L: dessert

    Last name ending in M-Z: salad, vegetable or vegetarian dish

    There is no fee for the party (other than bringing a dish) although donations to the Bev Vogt PSU Geology Student Fund are always encouraged.

    We hope you will join us for this event!  

    • Friday, February 13, 2026
    • 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM
    • PSU Cramer Hall Rm 53 and via Zoom

    A Personal Re-evaluation of the "Big One"

    A small outcrop on an obscure knoll in the Santa Cruz Mountains (Coast Range) of California led Dr. Beaulieu to plate tectonic issues in Oregon. This strange rock catapulted him into an ever-widening career of geologic enlightenment. Over the years, he was fortunate to glean meaningful insights from otherwise drab studies. He came to understand that knowing plate tectonics in a general way as a geologist is one thing, but developing and presenting plate tectonic information to policy people guiding the future was a broader and more challenging task. It is there where we must really think as geologists. We must challenge ourselves anew with a truly wide-angle lens. We must look at all the geologic data and all the insights at our disposal. We must also recognize the limits of our data. In his opinion, there is now a need to pin down more exactly what really may have happened to Oregon on January 26, 1700.

    Register to watch the event via Zoom here.

    Speaker Bio:

    Dr. John Beaulieu was born at Hanford, Washington during the War. He cut his teeth early on geology by sneaking into the Reservation to collect fossils, and by taking a college level geology course at the age of 14. Later he was employed as the second leading geologist on the reservation in 1965. He notes there were only two geologists at the time! He graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors at the University of Washington (1966) and received a PhD in Geology shortly thereafter (1970) from Stanford University. After a short stint as an Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon, he progressed at DOGAMI to become Deputy Director in 1977 and Director from 1999 to 2003 when he retired. He produced numerous publications on various aspects of the geology of Oregon. He was part of the US/United Nations Team dispatched to Japan to advise on earthquake mitigation after the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Over the years, additional attention has been given to core aspects of the geology of Oregon.