Rate My Professor Sally Zellers

Sarah "Sally" Zellers is Professor of Geoscience in the School of Geoscience, Physics & Safety at the University of Central Missouri. She earned her Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from The University of Texas at Austin in 1995, following earlier graduate work there from 1986. Zellers specializes in micropaleontology, biostratigraphy, sequence stratigraphy, marine geology, sedimentary basins, palaeoecology, sedimentology, stratigraphy, paleoceanography, and paleogeography. Her research examines glaciomarine sediments through foraminiferal faunas, glacial dynamics, paleoenvironments, and climate variability, with studies in the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Trough, Greenland ice sheet, and subduction zones. She has contributed as a biostratigrapher to International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) expeditions, including Expedition 386 to the Japan Trench in 2022 for paleoseismology and the Chicxulub peak-ring impact crater drilling.

Zellers' key publications include "Japan Trench event stratigraphy: First results from IODP giant piston coring in a deep-sea trench to advance subduction zone paleoseismology" (2024), "Earthquake-enhanced dissolved carbon cycles in ultra-deep ocean sediments" (Nature Communications, 2023), "Phasing of millennial-scale climate variability in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans" (2020), "Supraglacial dust constrains meltwater export from the Greenland ice sheet" (Nature Communications, 2020, second author), "Sediment controls dynamic behavior of a Cordilleran Ice Stream at the Last Glacial Maximum" (2020), and "Late Quaternary glacial dynamics and sedimentation variability in the Bering Trough, Gulf of Alaska" (2017). She received the Geological Society of America (GSA) Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division Kirk Bryan Award in 2021 for her paper on the dynamic role of the Pacific Ocean and Cordilleran Ice Sheet in millennial-scale global climate variability. At UCM, Zellers taught undergraduate courses in geology, stratigraphy, meteorology, and oceanography, developed teaching activities such as earthquake comparisons and hypoxia modules via the Science Education Resource Center (SERC), and participated in 11 SERC workshops. She served on the UCM Board of Governors from August 2003 to December 2024 and is a Research Fellow at the Jackson School Museum of Earth History, University of Texas at Austin, continuing Alaskan foraminifera research.