Washington, DC—The National Association of Geoscience Teachers has awarded the 2008 James H. Shea Award to science writer Alan Cutler at the Carnegie Institution. The Shea Award is given annually to an individual “for exceptional contributions in the form of writing and/or editing of Earth Science materials that are of interest to the general public and/or teachers of Earth Science.”
Cutler received the honor for his book The Seashell on the Mountaintop, which was selected for the Barnes and Noble's summer 2003 Discover Great New Writers program and the Discovery Channel Book Club. Other winners of the Shea Award include Science magazine writer Richard Kerr, Pulitzer Prize winner John McPhee, and Stephen Jay Gould.
Cutler’s The Seashell on the Mountaintop is a story about Nicolaus Steno, whose work on fossils and
rock-layer formation was critical to the birth of modern geology. Cutler received his Ph. D. in geosciences
from the University of Arizona. He has published in Science magazine, the Washington Post, Geotimes,
and various Smithsonian Institution publications. He will receive the Shea Award at the annual meeting
of the Geological Society of America meeting in October in Houston.
“The Carnegie Institution is committed to communicating science to the public in the clearest possible way and we are pleased that Alan is on our team. The institution is very proud that he is receiving this award,” commented Richard Meserve, Carnegie president.
The Shea award was established in 1991 in honor of James H. Shea, long-time editor of the Journal of Geoscience Education. For more information see http://www.nagt.org/nagt/programs/shea.html and http://alan-cutler.com/ [2]