Education
Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, 1985
B.A. Wellesley College, 1980
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Personal Statement
I
always thought I would end up as a newspaper editor because that was
my favorite activity in high school. It never occurred to me to be
interested in science; there were no women science teachers, and girls
did not take science courses at my high school (I hope that has changed
by now!) So I first became interested in geology as a sophomore Art
History major at Wellesley, when I was required to take a science
course as part of the distribution requirements for graduation. In
that class, I had a woman professor, Meg Thompson (Smith '70) who
inspired and encouraged me. Before I knew it I was a double major
with Geology. I went immediately to graduate school at M.I.T., then
to a post-doc at Caltech, and before I knew it I was in a position
to help other women like myself discover the field of geology. I am
the third generation of women in my family who have graduated from
women's colleges, and there is not a day at Mount Holyoke when I do
not reflect on how this legacy has enriched my life. I am deeply committed
to the importance of educating women, especially in the sciences,
and to enriching their lives through knowledge and understanding of
our world (and our solar system!)
I
have taught at both the University of Oregon and West Chester University
of Pennsylvania. After five years of commuting to Philadelphia every
week, I recently quit my tenure track job at the latter school in
1996 so I could live closer to home. My husband, Peter Crowley, teaches
at Amherst College, and I have two wonderful children: Duncan, born
7/21/95, and Lindy, born 3/3/98. I'm teaching at Mount Holyoke because
I couldn't pass up the opportunity to work with the wonderful faculty
and students in this Department!
Teaching
Courses I
teach include GEO 101 (Physical Geology), GEO 104 (Planet Earth),
AST/GEO 223 (Planentary Science), and AST 330 (Topics in Astrophysics:
current topic: Mars). I also teach mineralogy occasionally. My goal
in these courses is to give both science and non-science students
an understanding of how scientists work, of the importance of logical
reasoning based on available evidence, of the basic principles of
earth science, and ultimately, of the interactions among humans, science,
and technology. To accomplish this goal, I incorporate methods of
cooperative learning by encouraging sharing of goals, resources, and
tasks. My experience has been that the process of working cooperatively
to solve problems results in better critical thinking by students
and ultimately in better performance.
In upper division courses, the goals remain the same but with added
emphasis on improving the students' facility and comfort with dimensional
analysis, "back-of-the-envelope" estimations, numerical
manipulations, visual and graphical representations, experimentation,
and modeling. I am especially dedicated to improving ways of presenting
3-D concepts to students with differing cognitive styles; this was
my motivation for designing my CD ROM and for creating my textbook,
in which every illustration has an animated 3-D equivalent on its
accompanying CD.
Research
I believe that the most important goal of my research program is to
involve students in the educational process of scientific thinking
and problem-solving. Over the last two decades I have had the pleasure
of involving more than undergraduates in my research program, of whom
the majority were women; half have continued into graduate work in
the geosciences or astronomy. These students have run my laboratory
operation, conceived and performed their own research projects (including
publishing and presenting the results), and assisted with nearly every
piece of research done in my lab.
My research expertise involves application of the tools of physics
to the problems of geology, with both terrestrial and extraterrestrial
emphases. With the help of students, I currently operate one of the
only Mössbauer spectroscopy labs in an earth science department
in this country. My research effort depends heavily on nuclear methods
(I have used the accelerators at both the University of Kentucky and
the University of Guelph) and on the use of synchrotron radiation.
I have pioneered the application of fast neutron activation analysis,
particle-induced gamma-ray and X-ray emission techniques to the study
of light elements in minerals. I am a monthly user of beam time at
the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory,
and am currently involved in development of XANES spectroscopy for
microscale determinations of Fe(III)/Fe(II) in samples of geologic
interest, including mantle xenoliths, crustal metapelites, lunar-analog
glasses, and martian and other meteorites.
I have been interested in planetary
science since graduate school, when part of my Ph.D. thesis was spent
working for NASA on glasses in lunar soils. I can never forget the
first time I held a lunar sample in my hand and looked up at a full
moon in the sky. I find it pretty incredible that we have succeeded
in getting our hands on (literally) rocks from the moon in spite of
the vastness of the solar system. Since that first encounter with
extraterrestrial rocks, I have remained very interested in planetary
exploration. I am currently working on a large project involving planetary
evolution. We are using rocks from the Earth's mantle, meteorites
from Mars, lunar samples, and meteorites from an asteroid (Vesta)
to try to understand how planets and their atmospheres form. Specifically,
I am interested in the hydrogen contents of these rocks, and how they
relate to the oxidation state of iron found in them. At the moment
I am working on martian meteorites. It's really neat to hold a piece
of Mars in your hand!
The other focus of my research program is the study of the interaction
between fluids and coexisting minerals in rocks; I seek understand
how these interactions affect the mechanical behavior and physical
parameters of rocks. My current work involves relating the chemistry
of different types of rocks (metamorphic metapelites from western
Maine, and mantle xenoliths from the S.W. U.S.) to their field relationships
(in Maine) and to their strength and flow under mantle conditions
(for xenoliths). My interests include fundamental questions involving
the oxidation state and water/hydrogen contents of crust and mantle
materials, as well as the scale and nature of the mechanisms of their
transport. This approach of studying iron and hydrogen together is
also critical to understanding of the mineralogy of martian soils,
which is ongoing as we process data from the Pathfinder mission. One
of the unresolved issues is the question of where the water that once
flowed on the martian surface is now located. My work focuses on the
spectral characterization of hydrogen-bearing phases and their anhydrous
equivalents in meteorites, in order to assess how much hydrogen may
now be stored in minerals in the martian soil vs. the hydrogen distribution
that prevailed when water flowed on the surface. This problem also
involves characterization of iron redox state, because of the dehydrogenation
relationship H+mineral + Fe2+mineral
= ½[H2]gas + Fe3+mineral.
Publications
