Rate My Professor Rick Oches

Eric A. (Rick) Oches served as Dean of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences in the Department of Natural and Applied Sciences at Bentley University from 2011 until 2024. He chaired the department from 2011 to 2018, developed new undergraduate and graduate programs integrating arts and sciences with business education, and served as interim provost in 2022. Prior to Bentley, Oches was associate professor in the Department of Geology and chair of the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of South Florida, and a visiting scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His teaching emphasizes science of environmental sustainability, global climate and environmental change, Earth materials and processes, and science education for non-STEM students to build science literacy and address sustainability challenges.

Oches earned a BS in Geosciences from Purdue University, an MA in Geosciences from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a PhD in Geosciences from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research centers on Quaternary paleoclimatology, geoarchaeology, and paleoenvironmental reconstruction using loess-paleosol sequences to study past climate changes and human responses. Notable publications include 'Late Pleistocene loess-palaeosol sequences in the Vojvodina region, north Serbia' (Journal of Quaternary Science, 2008), 'Loess in Europe—mass accumulation rates during the Last Glacial Period' (Quaternary Science Reviews, 2003), 'Rock-magnetic proxies of climate change in the loess-palaeosol sequences of the western Loess Plateau of China' (Geophysical Journal International, 1995), 'The last million years recorded at the Stari Slankamen loess-palaeosol sequence' (Quaternary Science Reviews, 2011), and 'Aeolian dust dynamics in central Asia during the Pleistocene' (Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 2008). He led a five-year NSF-IUSE grant with collaborators from Bentley, Northern Illinois University, and Wittenberg University titled 'Collaborative Research: Broadening the Fusion of STEM and Business Curricula in Undergraduate Sustainability Education' to enhance transdisciplinary approaches to wicked problems in sustainability.