Portrait image of Victoria Hojnacki
Victoria Hojnacki

Assistant Professor of Geology

Contact Information

OFFICE: Zurn 206B
PHONE: 814-824-2059

Education

  • Ph.D., Environmental Science and Management, Montclair State University, 2024
  • B.S., Geology, James Madison University, 2019

Dr. Hojnacki joined the Mercyhurst faculty in the fall of 2024. She is passionate about earth science and loves to share this passion with her students.

About Dr. Hojnacki
    • GEOL 100: Dynamic Earth
    • Soil Science
    • Sedimentology and Stratigraphy
    • Earth, Life, and Time

    Dr. Hojnacki’s research focuses on the sedimentology, paleoclimatology, and paleoceanography of high-latitude regions. Her projects focus on the use of ocean sediments to help reconstruct past environemental conditions that occur during climate transitions. Her recent projects focus on the Eocene-Oligocene transition, when the development of a permanent Antarctic Ice Sheet occured. In the summer of 2022, Dr. Hojnacki particapted in the International Ocean Discovery program, Expedidtion 393: The South Atlantic Transect. Her current project focuses on this expedition in order to understand how the development of the West Antartic ice-sheet affected paleocurrents in the South Atlantic.

    • Hojnacki, V., &  Passchier, S. (2024). Early Oligocene record of an “iceberg alley” in the Weddell Sea from quartz sand microtextural analysis at ODP Site 696. Geosphere 2024; 20 (4): 1054–1065. doi: https://doi.org/10.1130/GES02686.1
    • Hojnacki, V., Lepp, A., Horowitz Castaldo, J., States, A., Li, X., & Passchier, S. (2022). Impact of Eocene-Oligocene Antarctic glaciation on the paleoceanography of the Weddell Sea. Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, 37, e2022PA004440. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022PA004440