The state of Odisha is endowed with bountiful natural resources, serpentine rivers, glorious mountains and hills ranges, dimpled valleys, lushy green forests and a diverse flora and fauna. The state is a repository of about 24 percent mineral resources of the country, the exploitation and extraction of which require trained and quality manpower. The Department of Geology is the cradle of Geology education in the state of Odisha. The Department came into existence in the year 1954 with the opening of the Undergraduate program under Utkal University.   Dr. Narasingha Satpathy was the first Head of the Department of Geology. The cudgels of developing the department fell on the shoulders of Prof. A.K. Dey, Dr S.Viswanathan, Dr. S.N. Rao, Dr. N. Acharya, Dr. S. Acharya, Dr. D.N. Kanungo who were the founding members of the Department. The Post graduate teaching was started in the year 1956 and continued up to 1977 when it was hived off to Utkal University campus at Bhubaneswar. UG teaching however, continued in this institution under Utkal University till 2006. In the year 2006 Ravenshaw College was declared a Unitary University and the bastion of the Geology Department passed on to the Ravenshaw University, Cuttack. After a long hiatus Post Graduate teaching was restarted in the Department in the year 2010.  The academic block which houses the Department since its inception is reminiscent of Victorian architecture having a floor space of 22,000 square feet and was funded by the Kalinga Foundation, the Govt. of Odisha and the Union Government built for the proliferation of geological sciences. In 2010 the rebuilding of the department was started virtually from scratch with generous grants from the UGC and the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India. Now the Department of Geology boasts of one of the finest rocks and mineral specimen museum, XRD, Ion-Chromatography, Remote Sensing- GIS laboratories.