Jonathan D. Price

A native of Portland, Oregon, I was influenced towards the study of the Earth in middle school, when I witnessed the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens from near my parents' house. After engaging thesis studies on the igneous chemistry of Cascadian volcanic products for my B.S. and M.S. at Baylor University, I completed multifaceted Ph.D. research at the University of Oklahoma in 1998. There my focus switched to intrusive products, specifically the prominent Cambrian shallow intrusive units exposed in the Wichita Mountains of southwestern Oklahoma.  Following a brief but rewarding stint mapping for the Oklahoma Geological Survey, I moved on to a post-doc in experimental geochemistry at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) focusing on grain-scale permeability. I continued in the employ of RPI Earth and Environmental Sciences as a senior research associate. In 2010, I joined the Geosciences faculty at Midwestern State University, where I currently teach lower-level physical science, and numerous upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses.  In 2015, I was appointed department chair of the newly-named Kimbell School of Geosciences.

I pursue research questions on magmatism and related tectonics with the  full involvement of undergraduate and graduate students. In addition to maintaining research in nearby southwestern Oklahoma and the central Oregon Cascades, current projects also include the Big Bend and Llano Uplift of Texas, each with a view towards understanding magmatic processes in general. I also manage the KSG’s X-ray characterization laboratory and the McCoy College’s SEM-EDS instrument, student-oriented facilities that permit thorough chemical characterization of igneous rocks.