Dr. Shelley Judge returned to the OSU School of Earth Sciences family full time in Spring 2025 as an Assistant Professor of Teaching. Shelley is a classically trained field geologist and science educator with a B.A. in Geology and History from Mount Union College and an M.A.T. in Science Education from Kent State University.  She then earned both her M.S. and Ph.D. from OSU, with her doctoral research focused on the Wasatch monocline in central Utah. Shelley served as an Assistant Professor at Muskingum University for several years before teaching at The College of Wooster as an Assistant and eventually full Professor and department chair in the Department of Earth Sciences.

Despite her time at these other institutions, Shelley has always remained part of the OSU teaching family.  Her time teaching mapping techniques, Utah stratigraphy, and computer-assisted structural analyses to students at OSU’s field camp in Utah spans decades, extending from initially serving as a teaching assistant to teaching as a Field Camp Instructor.  She will focus her teaching at OSU within the Geological Sciences Subprogram and will, of course, continue to teach at field camp in Utah. 

Her research interests include the tectonic evolution of the Sevier and Laramide orogenies of the western U.S. and superimposed Basin and Range extension, with special emphasis on these geologic events in Utah.  In addition, she is interested in the fluvial-lacustrine evolution of major Paleocene-Eocene systems in Utah.  Shelley also previously participated in several ocean drilling programs (IODP, CRP3, ANDRILL).  She often collaborates with her students on synergistic research projects, as she has directed a total of nearly 50 undergraduate senior theses during her time at Muskingum and Wooster.