2025 Awardee - Laura Guertin, Penn State Brandywine

Laura Guertin has been awarded the 2025 Neil Miner Award by the National Association of Geoscience Teachers

Dr. Laura Guertin is a Distinguished Professor of Earth Sciences at Penn State Brandywine, a campus with a primarily two-year feeder mission located outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She holds a B.A. in Geology from Bucknell University and a Ph.D. in Marine Geology & Geophysics from the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science. At Penn State Brandywine since 2001, she has taught 18 different introductory-level general education courses for non-science majors in Earth science, geoscience, and geography. She has received grant funding from the EPA and National Science Foundation for projects relating to geoscience education and outreach. Her research has focused on utilizing new and emerging technologies and pedagogical approaches to improve the scientific, information, and geospatial literacies of non-STEM students. For ten years, she was the blogger on geoscience education and educational technology with the American Geophysical Union (GeoEd Trek). Guertin is also passionate about education and outreach outside of her classroom, connecting with non-STEM audiences through science communication events in-person and online. Since 2018, she has been generating quilts as tools for science storytelling, generating thematic collections on the Louisiana coast and her time at sea on JOIDES Resolution. She is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.