Get to know Dorsey Wanless, Dr. Kenneth M. Hollenbaugh Endowed Professor in Economic Geology

An endowed professorship is a prestigious faculty position permanently funded by a donation. Endowed faculty positions strengthen Boise State, benefit important research and create countless opportunities for students. But who are these endowed professors, and what are their plans for helping students thrive?

Dorsey Wanless is chair of the Department of Geosciences and the Dr. Kenneth M. Hollenbaugh Endowed Professorship in Economic Geology. As part of her endowed role, she will help build a research and educational program focused on critical minerals and economic geology.

We sat down with Wanless to talk about the new critical minerals program and how it fits into the Department of Geosciences.

This endowed professorship was created in honor of Dr. Kenneth M. Hollenbaugh, a former Boise State geosciences professor. Tell us about Professor Hollenbaugh.

Professor Hollenbaugh was one of the founding members of our Department of Geosciences and also one of the founding members of the university, in a lot of ways. He was dean of the Graduate College and helped transition Boise State from an undergrad-only institution to a university offering graduate degrees.

I was able to meet him last year at a Department of Geosciences alumni event and, at 90, he is still just as smart and firecracker as ever. The number of alumni that came up to me and said, "Ken was one of the most impactful professors that I had in my entire time at Boise State." A lot of people talked about how he was the only one who took you out into the field. He really showed you what geoscience was all about.

This endowed professorship will support building a program in critical minerals and economic geology. What is this subfield?

Economic geology is a field of study about things of value, almost. So natural gas, oil and hydrothermal all fall under an economic geologist's purview, along with critical minerals. It's really looking at resources, where they form, where they're found and how you can extract them.

In Idaho, it's the critical minerals like gold, silver, phosphate that are important for national security, agriculture and even making concrete. We mine all those minerals here in Idaho on a regular basis.

The Stibnite mine here played a critical role in World War II in mining antimony, which was used to harden metals for armor on tanks, bullets and airplanes. So antimony was one of the key national defense minerals for World War II.

Why is it important to build a base for this kind of expertise here at Boise State?

Here in Idaho, we have cobalt and phosphate and gold, and so we have a lot of critical minerals that are scattered throughout the state. Our critical minerals program will help students understand not only how to mine those, but how to do it in a socially responsible way.

Idaho is a very outdoorsy state. We love our backcountry and our natural lands. So it's really important for us to have somebody in a position that is thinking about, not only the formation and mining of critical minerals, but how we can mine them in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way.

Idaho has a long history with precious metals, going back to the gold rush in the 1860s. Miners back then used a particular set of tools and skills, but today we have access to much more advanced technology. What sorts of skills will Boise State critical mineral students learn?

Compared to panning for gold in the 1800s, a lot has changed, but there are some aspects of what they were doing back then that still exist. We still need to go out and map different deposits and look for signatures of critical minerals, and our students get a lot of great field training here.

But in terms of how technology has advanced, we can partner with our geophysics program here at Boise State. We can use methods like ground-penetrating radar to see inside the Earth without having to mine. Other instruments like X-ray fluorescent spectrometry can determine chemical compositions of different cores and ore deposits, to try to understand the grade of the deposit.

This endowed professorship was made possible by the generous donation of a Boise State geosciences alum who went on to have a very successful career in economic geology. What sorts of careers does the Department of Geosciences prepare students for?

It's a pretty broad spectrum. Our alumni go to work for the Idaho Department of Water Resources, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Geological Survey and a variety of environmental consulting firms. They can work for mining companies. We even have students that go into environmental law.

A lot of them actually stay here in Idaho. Boise's a great place to live, so once our undergraduates get here, they don't want to leave.

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