Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Feb. 21, 2005

Wilmington, N.C. – Patricia Kelley, professor in the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Department of Earth Sciences, was elected to the rank of fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The induction ceremony took place Feb. 19 in Washington, D.C., at the annual meeting of the AAAS.

“This is a tremendous honor for Dr. Kelley and an indication of the quality of the faculty at UNCW. Fellows are AAAS members whose ‘efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications are scientifically or socially distinguished,’” said Richard Laws, chair of the Department of Earth Sciences at UNCW.

She received this honor for outstanding contributions to the study of predator-prey interactions in the fossil record and for contributions to public awareness of paleontology.

Kelley is a paleontologist whose interests include modes and rates of evolutionary change and origin of macro evolutionary patterns, which she investigates using Coastal Plain mollusks. In addition to being a professor and the past departmental chair at UNCW, she is a senior author of more than 30 refereed papers and past president of the Paleontology Society, an international organization with members in 44 countries.

Kelley attended the College of Wooster as an undergraduate. She then went to Harvard to obtain her Ph.D. where studied under Steven Jay Gould, who directed her interest to the field of teaching. She began her teaching career at the University of Mississippi where she was the first and only woman in the School of Engineering. After two years at the National Science Foundation as program director for geology and paleontology and geological record of global change, she was professor and chair of the Department of Geology and Geological Engineering at the University of North Dakota. She began her career at UNCW in 1997.

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For more information, contact Patricia Kelley at 910/962-7406 or kelleyp@uncw.edu.