Dedication of the M. Meghan Miller Conference Room

On Friday, December 2, 2022, we formally named room 317 in Discovery Hall the M. Meghan Miller conference room. The name acknowledges Emeritus Professor Miller’s generous donation to the department to establish the M. Meghan Miller endowment, which will help us advance strategic priorities that broaden participation in geology at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Prior to the dedication of the room, Dr. Miller gave a talk in the department seminar entitled, “Timing and Navigation: One Woman’s Path.” She described how her unusual childhood cultivated her sense of adventure and ambition and led to decisions to go into geology and geophysics.

Dr. Miller arrived at CWU in 1991 and was the first female faculty member in the Department of Geological Sciences. She got right to work: she collaborated with colleagues across the Pacific Northwest to procure grants to establish the first continuously-operating GPS receivers to measure real-time deformation in the Cascadia subduction zone—this was the birth of the Pacific Northwest Geodetic Array, or PANGA, still going very strong.

She became department chair in 1992, and one of her notable accomplishments in that role was starting our Masters Program. In 2002, Meghan became Dean of the College of the Sciences, and served in that role for six years. During that time, she instigated pre-planning discussions for Discovery Hall, known at the time as Science Phase II.

In 2008, Dr. Miller left CWU to serve as president of UNAVCO, a non-profit, NASA- and NSF-funded, university-governed consortium that facilitates geoscience research using geodesy, a role she held for ten years. In 2018, Dr. Miller was recognized with the Waldo E. Smith Award for Extraordinary Service to Geophysics for her lifelong contributions to the field in both research and service. Upon retiring from UNAVCO, she returned to Ellensburg.

We are grateful to Dr. Miller for her decision to create an endowment that will help us broaden participation in our courses and programs, and pleased to recognize her with this dedication.