Clark Niewendorp is a 25-year resident of Oregon and a retired geologist with a wealth of experience. His educational background includes a B.S. in Geology from Southeast Missouri State University and an M.S. from Western Michigan University. Beginning his career as a mine geologist in 1980, he gained experience in the Kentucky-Tennessee oil fields, environmental consulting, and a decade with the South Carolina Geological Survey. In 1999, he relocated his family to Oregon and retired in 2018 after 19 years with the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries. Since his retirement, Clark has been on the GSOC board of directors for five years, leading the group for three of those years.

Historical note from Carol Hasenberg, 2024:

After Sheila Alfsen’s presidency, Clark Niewendorp became president of GSOC, and his was the task of navigating the society out of the COVID pandemic and into what we feel is a new golden age. During the first couple years of the COVID pandemic the membership at GSOC had nearly doubled, as well as the geographical range of the members.

As many improvements to the GSOC business workings had been made during the previous 3 years, the focus to the presidency was to maintain the quality of the online meeting productions, resume the production of quality field trips and eventually to resume in-person meetings with hybrid technology. An incredible amount of time at board meetings was spent discussing issues like microphone quality, lighting, relations and communication with PSU staff, and the like. Numerous test runs were conducted to ensure that the meetings ran smoothly with minimal technical issues. We would like to recognize the hard work that Sheila Alfsen, Paul Edison-Lahm, Carole Miles, Gary Joaquin and Barbara Stroud put into making production quality a priority.

Also during this time the board started discussing creating our own scholarship fund for PSU geology students. Originally the board favored naming this fund after Oregon pioneer geologist Thomas Condon, but after Bev Vogt passed in 2021, it was decided to honor her memory by naming the fund after her.

Clark also organized and led a number of excellent field trips during and after his presidency. He used his experiences as a geological mapper for DOGAMI and as a mining engineer to develop field trips to Table Mountain, Quartzville mining district, Clackamas River Basin, Wasco County, and Detroit Lake. He also has done 2 Friday night lectures for GSOC - “The Oregon Gold Rush” in 2021 and “The Iron Dream” in 2022.

Clark has often said that he owes the success of his presidency to the very strong and cooperative team that was the GSOC Board of Directors during his term. We felt in our turn that Clark was an outstanding captain of that team.

-Carol Hasenberg, 2024

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Geological Society of the Oregon Country (GSOC)

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