Sarah Sheffield, a Paleobiologist and Assistant Professor in the School of Geosciences at the University of South Florida, was recently inducted as a 2020 fellow into the very prestigious Geological Society of America (GSA). This fellowship is traditionally bestowed upon faculty in their late-careers for their “sustained record of distinguished contributions to the geosciences and the GSA through such avenues as publications, applied research, teaching, … contributing to the public awareness of geology, [etc.].”
Most nominations require that faculty be established in their career for at least 15 years, but Sarah is quite young in the profession (in her mid-30s), and only became a tenured-track faculty member in 2019. Sarah was awarded the fellowship because she won the GSA Biggs Award for Excellence in Earth Science Teaching in 2019.
This award is given to the top geoscience educator in GSA, is highly competitive, and highlights the educational opportunities students at USF have by engaging with Sarah. Gaining these honors not only as someone early in their academic career, but also as a woman in STEM, shows just how important these honors are, and how distinguished her contributions have been.
Sarah shared that these distinguished awards have allowed her to expand her research outside of paleobiology and venture into geoscience education research. She currently works on diversity, equality, and inclusion research and stated that she “plans to use [her] fellowship status to nominate amazing folks from historically marginalized backgrounds so that GSA can better reflect the diversity of talented scientists in geology.”