Geology faculty member receives NSF grant award for field trips, student engagement

Dr. Onema Adojoh, an assistant professor of geology at Northwest Missouri State University, recently was recognized as the recipient of a 2025 Professional Faculty Award presented by American Geophysical Union (AGU) during the organization’s annual meeting in New Orleans.

In December, Adojoh attended the AGU annual meeting, which gathers more than 22,000 geoscience professionals from at least 100 countries. The travel grant award helps up to 50 early-to-mid career faculty attend the annual meeting.

Funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, the Travel Grant program sponsors selected faculty at Non-R1 Primarily Undergraduate Institutions to attend AGU meetings. In addition to a travel stipend, travel grant awardees have the opportunity to participate in professional development, networking and social events, and review student presentations.

The award recognizes Adojoh’s contributions to the scientific community while supporting continued professional growth as part of AGU’s mission to advance discovery and solutions to global challenges.

Adojoh’s recent contributions include historical geology and petrology field trips that took students to southeast Missouri in spring 2024 and spring 2025 as well as a fall 2024 visit to the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles.

“I am excited to have met folks of like minds and will continue to explore and apply these diverse subjects to teach students how the fossils, rocks, components of Earth’s environmental change system work, interact and evolve in the North Central America, South America and East Equatorial Africa,” Adojoh said.

Adojoh joined the Northwest faculty in 2023. He previously was a visiting assistant professor for earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

He has a Ph.D. in environmental science and geology from the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom, a master’s degree in petroleum geology from the University of Benin in Nigeria and a bachelor’s degree in applied geology from Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University in Nigeria.