Bruce R Clark Collegiate Professor of Geology, Professor of Geological Sciences and Professor of the Environment, Program in the Environment, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Ben van der Pluijm holds appointments in Earth and Environmental Sciences and in the Environment at the University of Michigan, and is Director of its undergraduate degree program in Global Change. He completed his “kandidaats” and “doctoraal” at the Universities of Leiden and Utrecht, the Netherlands, and dissertation research on Appalachian geology at the University of New Brunswick, Canada; he joined the University in 1985.
His research area is Tectonics and Structural Geology, dealing with the deformation of Earth’s lithosphere on scales ranging from microscope to continent; he uses laboratory methods that include X-ray analysis, electron microscopy, geochronology and rock magnetism. Current topics are seismic faulting, crustal architecture, orogenic curvature and exhumation, and clay mineralogy. His work takes him around the world, with recent field areas in North America, western Brazil, northern Spain, northern Tibet, off-shore Japan, northern Turkey and New Zealand’s South Island.
In addition to lower and upper level course offerings, including the interdisciplinary, team-taught Global Change curriculum, his educational interests involve the development and use of modern technologies to enhance students’ learning experiences, including TabletPCs for fieldwork (GeoPad) and handhelds and laptops for large classroom interactivity (LectureTools). These activities are carried out in partnerships with NSF, industry and the University.
Professor van der Pluijm has served in many department, college and university roles, including chair of the President’s Interdisciplinary Teaching Initiative and Senior Counselor to the Provost in charge of the university’s successful completion of the 2010 reaccreditation process. He recently returned from the National Science Foundation where he guided and coordinated a 15-program interdisciplinary initiative on sustainability and human well-being. He has served on many (inter)national agency panels, including the US National Science Foundation and the International Ocean Drilling Program, as member of ~dozen editorial boards, and as editor of the leading geosciences journal, GEOLOGY. He has (co-)authored more than 160 peer-reviewed articles, edited several book volumes and published two editions of the popular undergraduate textbook “Earth Structure”.
Professor van der Pluijm is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Geological Society of America, and the recipient of several awards, including the 2010 University Award for Service and Leadership.
He is married to Elisabeth (Lies) Quint, a U-M professor of OB/GYN, who shares his interest in travel and exploration, and they have two college-age sons at rival schools.
