GRANT LEADERSHIP

Harvey Henson

Assistant Dean of the College of Science at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, will manage and oversee all aspects of the project.  As a member of the Department of Geology since 1985, Harvey’s specialty is researching the earthquake threat related to the New Madrid Seismic Zone and conducting outreach to increase awareness and preparedness.  He has made numerous presentations and published several papers about earthquakes and the New Madrid Seismic zone during this time.  His research interests include shallow subsurface geophysics related to earthquake neotectonics and geo-archaeology. 

As outreach coordinator for the college he works with teachers, schools, and the southern Illinois community to share earth science ideas and concepts and to involve them in the university experience.  He is the co-director of numerous teacher partnerships and professional development programs, co-director of the SMART teacher graduate program, director of the Basics in Geology (BIG) after-school program and co-director of the Young Earth Scientist (YES) project.  During the past 6 years Henson has obtained and managed over $8 million in externally funded grants and projects sponsored by federal and state agencies including the NSF, ISBE, IBHE, NPS and IEMA/FEMA.  

Scott Hodgson

A Professor at the University of Oklahoma and Head of Media Arts, is well known for his work in corporate media communications. While serving as the Head of Radio-Television Production sequence at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale he began producing programs for PBS on how to prepare for earthquakes in the Midwest.  In 2006 he won numerous awards including an Emmy for the program, “Suddenly… on an Average Day.”  This program is being widely distributed throughout the Midwest as part of various earthquake awareness efforts.

Now at OU he continues to focus on creating disaster awareness media including producing a series of broadcast earthquake mitigation PSA‘s for IEMA in 2012.  His current series of documentaries looking at weather forecasting has resulted in weeks on locations shooting the 2011 Tuscaloosa and Joplin tornados aftermaths and he recently returned from two weeks shooting post-Sandy video in five states. The initial videos pieces have already won several major national awards.

Throughout the last decade, projects under his direction have won more than 125 national, international and state awards.   In 2001 Hodgson was selected by “Producer” magazine as one of the Top 100 Producers in the US.  Prior to coming to SIUC, Hodgson worked as a producer/director in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. for several full service production houses and in-house corporate video facilities.  He has also done extensive work overseas both as a producer and trainer including stints living in Egypt, Ethiopia, Nepal and Bangladesh.  Hodgson will oversee all video and media production.

Mike Fleming

Mr. Fleming teaches high school design and construction classes in southern Illinois, is a well-known figure in the community.  Mike will serve multiple roles for this project.  As an expert builder and contractor, he can assist with the practical specifics of the content.  As an educator he brings an instructional design background to the writing process.  He will also assist in finding appropriate locations across the region suitable for filming.  He has acted in multiple media projects and has great presence on and off camera.

Kurtis Levi Milliron

K. Levi Milliron grew up in Central Indiana and developed a love for geology in middle school. Applying his lessons in rocks and minerals, he acted as a guest speaker to classes of second graders to introduce the next generation to his beloved field. Pursuing this passion further, he earned a degree at Hanover College in Southern Indiana majoring in Geology with minors in Math and Physics. During his years in the Ohio River Valley, he taught intro course labs, led geology study groups, and tutored geology students in the Learning Center all the while taking a broad spectrum of geology courses including Structural Geology, Hydrogeology, Petrology, and Sedimentology. Continuing his education he is pursuing his Master’s in Geophysics at Southern Illinois University, specializing in the study of intraplate seismic zones. He is contributing to a long term study of the Wabash Valley Fault Zone, a region that has released significantly more energy in the last 60 years than the nearby, more famous New Madrid Fault Zone. While studying at SIU Carbondale, Levi has taught two semesters of introductory labs and participated in a Noyce Grant program as a Geology Expert for a group of K-12 teachers learning techniques for conducting scientific research.

Production Team

A group of Creative Media Production students at The University of Oklahoma are serving as the production crew as part of a paid internship program.  The students participating are listed below.