High on Geology Professors Godchaux (fourth from right) and Mike Rhodes (top) with their students climbing a boulder at the base of the dome of Mount St. Helens in 1990. The professors will take students on a volcanology field trip to the Cascade mountain range this summer.
Retiring Geology Professor Martha Godchaux is going out, characteristically, with a volcanic bang. In June, she and Five College Professor of Geochemistry Mike Rhodes, who jointly teach a Five College seminar course on volcanology, will be taking about twenty students from this semester's class on a two-week field trip to the Cascade mountain range in the northwest United States. "We'll be looking at all the different types of volcanism that have taken place in the Cascades," says Godchaux. "It's a show-and-tell style of field trip, where students see what they've been reading about. We do smaller expeditions during the summer when we do more in the way of mapping and sampling."
Major Five College volcanology field trips have become something of a tradition since their inception in 1979, and take place every few years, depending on funding and planning constraints. Previous trips have led to some exciting moments. During the now-legendary 1984 trip to Hawaii, the class was sleeping on Mauna Loa when the volcano erupted during the night. "This happened to be the first big field trip," Godchaux recalls, "and it's been famous ever since. Hawaiian eruptions are very safe and tourist-friendly, so we were able to watch safely from the side of the mountain." The group watched fire fountains and lava flows about a quarter-mile away, until the National Park Service arrived at 7 am encouraging them to leave to avoid having their exit route cut off by molten lava flows.
This year's field trip begins in Portland, Oregon, where the group will drive to Bend to stay at a community college and take day trips to Crater Lake, Three Sisters, and other local volcanic sites. At Mount St. Helens near Mount Rainier, they'll be getting up at 3 am to climb the eight miles up to view the 1980 eruption deposits. They'll also be visiting the Cascades Volcanic Observatory in Vancouver, Washington, and other sites during the two-week trip.
If this sounds strenuous, that's because it is. "Students have to be in shape to handle the field trip. We keep an eye on them on our shorter hikes to see who's up to the trip," says Godchaux, who runs about ten miles a day. Holly Kohler '01 is eagerly looking forward to the trip. "I haven't done much field work before, so visiting volcanoes with a really knowledgeable volcanologist seemed like an outstanding opportunity." Kohler, who is interested in science writing, is glad she was advised to take the course before Godchaux retires. "She's so accessible, it's been a very good experience."
Godchaux, who became a faculty member in 1970, and has been teaching half-time since 1989, will be joining her husband permanently in Idaho, where he is with the Idaho Geological Survey. She expects to stay professionally active in various capacities and has hopes of learning Spanish well enough to teach and work in Mexico with colleagues.
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