Dr. Vince Cronin

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Research Areas:          

• Solid Earth and Planetary Sciences: Geodesy
• Hydrological and Surface Processes: Engineering geology
• Lithospheric Processes:  Structural geology, Tectonics

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Education:

• Ph.D., Texas A & M University
• A.M., Earth Sciences, Dartmouth College
• B.A., Geology, Pamona College

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Biographical Sketch:

Dr. Cronin worked with the former State Geologist of California, Dr. Jim Slosson, on a wide variety of projects in engineering geology early in his career. From his experience working on landslides with Jim, Dr. Cronin developed the concept of compound landslides. At Dartmouth College in collaboration with Professors Gary and Noye Johnson, Dr. Cronin conducted pioneering work on the physical and magnetic-polarity stratigraphy of the Skardu Basin in Baltistan, northern Pakistan, and provided a regional neotectonic model for that area as a detached allochthon between the Karakoram fault, Nanga Parbat-Haramosh uplift, the frontal thrusts of the western Himalaya, and the extensional area of the Upper Sutlej River Basin. Dr. Cronin developed a solution for the "three-plate problem" of finite plate kinematics that led to improved understanding of the kinematics of transform faults, the evolution of plate triple junctions, and the instantaneous kinematics of mid-ocean ridges. He is writing a book-length primer on plate kinematics. Dr. Cronin developed the seismo-lineament analysis method (SLAM) that uses earthquake focal mechanisms to help discover the ground-surface trace of seismogenic faults, which has been successfully employed in a variety of structural settings worldwide. He participated in Project EarthScope by helping to secure Transportable Array sites in Texas. His time working with Jim Slosson led Dr. Cronin to work in the nascent field of applied ethics in geoscience, which is now generally referred to as Geoethics. He has served along with Professor Cindy Palinkas of the University of Maryland as co-heads of the United States section of the International Association for Promoting Geoethics (www.geoethics.org).

Dr. Cronin earned tenure at both the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Baylor University where he was promoted to full professor. Dr. Cronin has taught a wide range of courses involving structural geology, tectonics, and engineering geology, as well as the core undergraduate geology courses in physical geology, petrology, and structural geology. He was chosen for the first Martine D. Meyer Award for outstanding undergraduate teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He was designated a "Top Community Contributor" to the collections of the Science Education Resource Center. His primer on focal mechanisms for structural geologists is widely used by geoscience students. The educational module on measuring crustal strain using GPS site velocities that he created along with Phil Resor, Shelley Olds, and Beth Pratt-Sitaula became the model for the GETSI modules that UNAVCO has produced and published online. He is the editor of the 11th through 13th editions of the AGI/NAGT Laboratory Manual in Physical Geology. He served as Baylor's institutional representative to the UNAVCO and WInSAR Consortia, and as one of the representatives to the IRIS Consortium. He served as research advisor for 18 MS theses and many BS research projects at UWM and Baylor.

For additional biographical information, go to http://croninprojects.org/Vince/Intro/.