Dr. Matthew Totten retired in August 2022, after 17 years of service to the Department of Geology and Kansas State University.
Matt joined the university faculty as an associate professor in June, 2005, following 13 years of service at the University of New Orleans. He received a bachelor’s degree in geology in 1977 from the University of Kansas, and a M.S. in geology from the University of Oklahoma in 1979. He worked as a petroleum geologist in Wichita, Kansas, for ten years before returning to the University of Oklahoma, earning a Ph.D. degree in Geology in 1992.
Matt was active in the graduate program while at Kansas State, supervising 43 graduate students. Combined with the 15 students supervised in New Orleans, this resulted in 58 students supervised in his 30-year academic career. Many have gone on to successful careers in industry, and several have finished their doctorate degrees. Dr. Totten taught a number of courses for undergraduate and graduate students, including Petroleum Geology, Subsurface Methods, Formation Evaluation, but also Earth in Action and Earth through time for non-geology majorsHis graduate courses were known for using state of the art computer software utilized in industry. He was instrumental in acquiring donations of this software to KSU, valued in the millions of dollars. He was awarded the Coombs award for excellence in teaching from the Department of Geology in 2007. Dr. Totten’s research concentrated on diagenesis of fine-grained sedimentary rocks, and the identification and prediction of reservoir conditions in mid-continent petroleum basins. His work established a connection between clay-mineral transformations and the growth of silt-sized quartz, as well as documenting heavy-mineral controls on the trace element geochemistry of shales. His work in the western Kansas petroleum basin has contributed to the understanding of dolomitization on reservoir conditions, and the recognition of these conditions using geophysical methods.