Rock-Solid Research Experience Leads to Fellowship
Greg Snyder’s long career of research and renewed faculty role led to fellowship in the Society of Economic Geologists.
Assistant Teaching Professor Greg Snyder was awarded the rank of Fellow in the Society of Economic Geologists (SEG) in April 2025. His nomination was approved following a decade of geological research in the 1990s, a multi-decade career change, and his return to the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences in 2022.
Snyder, a member of the SEG for three years, teaches EEPS 215: Critical Minerals, Energy, & Society, among other courses. His engagement with students in that course led to the formation of a student SEG chapter at UT.
“The students had a desire to establish a chapter,” said Snyder. “They asked and I agreed to be their faculty advisor. One catch: In order to be a faculty advisor, you had to be a fellow of the society.”
SEG representatives reviewed Snyder’s curriculum vitae and research record in economic geology and let him know he was a prime candidate to be a Fellow in the society.
Richly Layered Career Experience
As a UT Knoxville research professor from 1990 to 1999, Snyder worked on lunar rocks and meteorites under a NASA research grant and studied diamond inclusions from Siberia under a National Science Foundation grant. He also studied layered mafic intrusions from the Kola peninsula and Karelian regions of western Russia and helped supervise a related graduate thesis.
“It was the combination of my work over a decade on diamond deposits and layered mafic intrusions, which host economic deposits of chromium, nickel, copper, and platinum-group metals, that got their attention,” he said.
Snyder feels honored to have his work recognized with the Fellow designation.
“I am overwhelmed that it was even possible,” he said. “Ever since my graduate school days, I have looked up to the members of this society and the work they have done to further our understanding of the formation and evolution of metal deposits all over the world.”
Snyder took a long hiatus from geology research before returning to UT in recent years, first establishing a teaching role in a very different field.
“I returned to UT Knoxville in 2022 after a 23-year hiatus,” he said. “I went to seminary and became a senior pastor in the Anglican Church for 20 years—another story for another time. I was brought back to UT to teach introductory survey classes, especially EEPS 101: Dynamic Earth and EEPS 104: Exploring the Planets. My first year back I also taught an UNHO 101 honors class on science and religion.”
Forging Ahead as an Economic Geologist
Economic geologists focus on the materials that build vital infrastructure, large and small.
“Our modern society would not be possible without metals and the economic geologists who discover them, maintain them, and finance them,” said Snyder. “From building materials to road construction and concrete, to smart phones, computers, and electric vehicles, to highly efficient magnets in defense applications and in wind turbines, automobiles, and many more applications.”
He looks to teach a more general course in economic geology in the future that would include a lab component, for geology and other majors, and would like to lead a summer field course for students to the mines of the southwestern US.
“In the meantime, I am developing relationships with mines, mining ventures, and mining companies in the southeastern US in order to give my students opportunities for internships and career choices, and also to have locales for field trips,” he said. “I hope to continue to grow interest in our department in economic geology, continue to grow the student SEG chapter, help train future economic geologists, and help them to get summer internships and future jobs.”
By Randall Brown