Nina Fitzgerald’s Hike Writeups
from the St. George Magazine
Message from long-time Outback Club member Nina Fitzgerald
As many of you may know, in the summer of 2004 (and at age 51) I walked (actually I ran) away from a 20-year career as a registered nurse to pursue my dream. I went back to school to work towards an undergraduate degree in geology at Southern Utah University in Cedar City. After 5 years of loving every minute of the geology and barely enduring the calculus and physics required for the degree, I will be graduating on Saturday, May 2, 2009 with a Bachelor of Science degree in geology. In addition, I have been offered (and have accepted) admittance to the Masters program and a Graduate Assistantship in the Department of Geology, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ. The assistantship begins in August 2009 and lasts for 2 years, after which time I had better have my Masters or else I'm on my own with regards to funding. One of the cool things about all this is that I will most likely be able to continue research I started as an undergraduate, studying the 1.7 billion-year-old metamorphic rocks in the Beaver Dam Mountains. So although I haven't hiked much with the club over the past 5 years, it was because I was wandering about the rock outcrops on the west side of old highway 91, just south of Utah Hill.
From mid-May until the end of July, I will be working as a geologist-park interpreter at Cedar Breaks National Monument, and then will be moving to Flagstaff.
Red
Canyon 
