Professor Sarah Penniston-Dorland was named chair of the University of Maryland’s Department of Geological, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences for a five-year term, effective July 1, 2026. A Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America, Penniston-Dorland joined the department in 2004 as a lecturer and was ultimately promoted to professor in 2020.
During her career, Penniston-Dorland has mentored over 40 undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows. She is best known for her research into metamorphic rocks exhumed from within subduction zones—tectonic plate boundaries where two plates collide and one is forced beneath the other and driven down into the Earth's mantle. Penniston-Dorland collects samples around the world and analyzes them in the lab using analytical tools such as an electron microprobe and mass spectrometry.
She also advocates for the study of rocks exhumed from fossil subduction systems within the scientific community that studies active subduction zones. She created an organization called ExTerra: Understanding Subduction Through the Study of Exhumed Terranes, which held several National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded workshops and created a five-year international field institute program to train graduate students and post-docs in the study of exhumed rocks from subduction terranes in the Western Alps.
Penniston-Dorland was elected to several leadership roles in the Mineralogical Society of America, including councilor, vice president and president; she currently serves as past president. She was a lead organizer and principal investigator for the NSF-funded Early Career Geoscience Faculty Workshop (2014-20). Penniston-Dorland also serves on the advisory board of the Journal of Petrology and as an associate editor of the Journal of Metamorphic Geology.
She served as the department’s director of graduate studies (2017-22); as the CMNS ADVANCE Professor, supporting the recruitment, retention, advancement and professional growth of a thriving faculty (2022-24); and on the campus professional-track faculty promotion review committee (2017).
Penniston-Dorland earned her Ph.D. in 2005 and a master’s in 1999 in earth and planetary sciences from Johns Hopkins University; a master’s in geological sciences in 1997 from the University of Texas, Austin; a master’s of education in 1990 from Harvard University; and her bachelor’s degree in 1986 in history and science from Harvard College.