The Thomas Condon Lecture honors the legacy of its namesake, a minister, a university teacher and Oregon’s first State Geologist. Thomas Condon used the free public lecture to disseminate scientific knowledge to the general public throughout his career. To honor that legacy, the Oregon Board of Higher Education established the Thomas Condon Lecture in 1944. The generous support of CEOAS and the Research Office allows OSU to bring world-class scientists to campus each year.
2025 Thomas Condon Lecture
Wednesday, October 29, 6 p.m. (reception begins at 5 p.m.)
The LaSells Stewart Center, Construction & Engineering Hall, and on Zoom
Title: Where did the lava flow and how do we know? A geological mystery and treasure hunt
Speaker: Nick Zentner teaches geology as Science Outreach and Education Coordinator at Central Washington University.
Talk summary: How have geological forces in the Pacific Northwest operated over the course of millions of years to create the landscapes we see today? And how do we know what happened to form our mountains, coastlines and other features? Nick Zentner, lecturer in geology at Central Washington University and star of the PBS show, “Nick on the Rocks,” loves to explore this kind of mystery. In this lecture, he will ask the seemingly simple question, did the lava that erupted from the Yellowstone hotspot 16 million years ago, known to geologists as flood basalt, make its way across the Cascade Range and to the Washington and Oregon coasts? Could that lava cross a mountain range? Zentner will present his perspective on the question, and take the audience on a scientific treasure hunt to find evidence for his answer.
Speaker bio: During the pandemic in 2020, Nick Zentner, senior geology lecturer at Central Washington University, taped his iPhone to a wooden step ladder and started filming videos about local geology and posted them on YouTube in order to connect with people and to try something new. Little did he know that his following would grow to be international in scope, and those initial YouTube videos would morph into his very own PBS-TV show on Washington geology, “Nick on the Rocks,” broadcast regularly throughout the Pacific Northwest. In 2021, the show won two Emmy awards from the Northwest Chapter of the National Association of Television Arts and Sciences.
Zentner has been awarded the 2023 Geological Society of America Public Service Award, the 2024 Neale Medal from the Geological Association of Canada, and the 2024 Outstanding Achievement Award from the American Institute of Professional Geologists, among other accolades. He earned his B.S. in geology in 1986 from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and his M.S. in geology in 1989 from Idaho State University.
2025 George Moore Seminar
More information coming soon
Past Condon Lectures
- 2024 - Elizabeth Holley - Minerals for green energy: how geology dictates the social and environmental impacts of mining
- 2023 - Thure Cerling - Ivory, INTERPOL, intrigue: Using chemistry to solve forensic mysteries
- 2022 - Kathy Cashman - What's under a volcano, and how do we know?
- 2021 - Jim O'Connor - The Missoula Floods and the Channeled Scablands
- 2020 - Julia Clarke - The secret lives of dinosaurs
- 2018 - Kenneth Ridgway - Earth science & communities: Great earthquakes to wild rice
- 2016 - John Grotzinger - Curiosity's mission of exploration at Gale Crater, Mars
- 2015 - Ellen Morris Bishop - Oregon's climates through time – stories in the stones
- 2014 - Tullis C. Onstott - Carbon cycling in the deep subsurface: Never was so much owed by so many to so few
History of the Condon Lectures at Oregon State
George Moore Seminar
The George Moore Seminar is named to honor the career and contributions of Dr. George W. Moore. Dr. Moore spent his career working for the U.S. Geological Survey where he focused on regional tectonic and structural problems. After retirement, he moved to Corvallis, where he volunteered for the Department of Geosciences in a wide variety of capacities. At the time of his death, George was working on a book about the geology of wine in Oregon.
- 2024 - Tom Benson - The Geology of Lithium Resources and Best Practices in Lithium Exploration
- 2023 - Thure Cerling - Environments of human evolution in Africa: Some isotopic answers to intriguing, improbable, and (at times) impossible questions
- 2022 - Kathy Cashman - Onset and impacts of the c.7700 ybp eruption of Mount Mazama, OR
- 2020 - Julia Clarke - Voices from the past: How we approach estimation of acoustic characteristics of extinct animals
- 2018 - Kenneth Ridgway - Cenozoic flat-slab subduction processes and the tectonic development of southern Alaska
- 2014 - Tullis C. Onstott - The hidden universe