Students’ Shale On TIME Cover

By LIBBY CUDMORE

Ian Austin/HOMETOWN ONEONTA
SUNY students Chris Keefe, left, and Joey Krikorian provided the shale that appeared on TIME’s cover April 4.

 

For many college students, researching for a class is something they try to get out of.  For SUNY Oneonta geology majors Joey Krikorian and Chris Keefe, it’s what they look forward to, but they never thought it would get them on the cover of TIME magazine.
For two years, Krikorian and Keefe, have been exploring the potential for trace metals to leach if Marcellus Shale drill cuttings are exposed to rain, according to Dr. James Ebert, Geology Department chair.
In late March, their project adviser, Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences Dr. Devin Castendyk, received a phone call from Time magazine asking for samples of the Marcellus Shale for a photo shoot that would be used in a special story on the Marcellus.
“Unsatisfied with the samples they had on hand,” Ebert continued, “Joey and Chris dropped what they were doing, drove back to Cherry Valley, and collected a new sample which they gave to the Time photographer Jeff Riedel. 
“On April 11, Joey and Chris’s rock sampled appeared on the front cover of Time magazine.”
“People seem to think that shale is a “dangerous” rock,” Keefe explained.  “But a granite countertop has only slightly less radioactivity than black shale.”
Their abstract on the drill cuttings was published with the Geological Society of America, and their findings were presented as a poster at GSA’s regional meeting in Baltimore in March 2010.  The Students Traveling for Excellence Program funded their trip to present at the GSA’s national meeting in Denver, Colo.
They were both adamant in admitting that their research was not a definitive answer to the fracking argument.  “There needs to be more research,” Krikorian insisted.