GeoSpectrum

It was an outreach program between a college and high school that helped Amanda Smith discover geology. Geologist Robert Vangundy of the University of Virginia (UVA) at Wise took high school students from the town of Coeburn in southwest Virginia on a field trip. “We went to a road cut,” Smith recalls, “it’s over a valley. You could see that one mountain on one side was the same as the other mountain — you could see where the valley was created.” She was hooked.

Now, she is an undergraduate at UVA Wise, majoring in Environmental Earth Science, and it is her turn to reach out. Last year, she volunteered for the Global Learning and Observations for the Benefit of the Environment (GLOBE) partnership between local schools and the UVA Wise science department; and for the Appalachian Math Science Partnership, an effort sponsored by the National Science Foundation to improve student achievement in math and science education in schools in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. Smith helped plan lessons and also met with students once a week, often taking them out in the field, to learn science hands-on and “to get them interested in science.”

To recognize her academic achievements and, in particular, her strong involvement in education and outreach, Smith is one of two women to win the Penelope Hanshaw Scholarship given by the AWG Potomac chapter this year. Joining her is Elizabeth Diesel, a Ph.D. student at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. And receiving an honorable mention is Lisa Tranel, also a Ph.D. student at Virginia Tech.

The scholarship was created in 1991, to honor the work of Hanshaw, a founding member of AWG-Potomac. Dr. Hanshaw was the first woman president of the Geological Society of Washington and served as Deputy Chief Geologist for Scientific Personnel at the U.S. Geological Survey before her retirement in 1990.

Diesel is entering her second year as a graduate geoscience student at Virginia Tech. Her first year was already productive for her research and her outreach activities. She started a monthly breakfast meeting for the undergraduate, graduate, faculty and staff women in the geoscience department. Teaming with the undergraduate geology club, she plans to start a resume writing workshop so that graduate students who have been in the workforce can help undergraduates “get prepared for what they want to do after college,” she says.

Diesel was a leader in her undergraduate community at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pa., as well, where as an officer in the geology club she led a recruitment effort that increased its membership from about 10 to about 40. A key tool was a Fossil Fest for elementary school children, she says. It attracted many Earth Science Education majors to the geology club. She also led a movie night. “We watched geology-themed movies,” she says, such as The Core. “We had a discussion about what they could have done to make this more geologically accurate.”

Now she is preparing to give her first oral presentation at the annual GSA meeting this fall. She is tracking the movement of arsenic through soil, particularly how it adsorbs onto particles of various sizes. She is interested in how the presence of phosphate and dissolved organic carbon can affect this adsorption.

Tranel is also entering her second year of her Ph.D. program. This semester, she will participate in Virginia Tech’s Multicultural Academic Opportunities Program, serving as a mentor to minority groups on campus. “It is a good opportunity for me to encourage women to go into the geosciences,” she says. Her research aims to understand glacial and fluvial erosion of mountain ranges. She spent the summer in Grand Teton National Park collecting rock and sediment samples that she will date. “I’m curious about how the erosion formed the landscape, in addition to the tectonics,” she says. “I’m fascinated by mountains. I want to understand why mountains have the shape that they do.”

Having spent her summer in the NASA DEVELOP Scholars Program working on GIS in the Wise County Clerk’s Office and working at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., Smith plans to use her GIS skills for UVA Wise this semester. The school is aiming to convert an unused coal mining trail on campus into a recreation trail. She will use GPS and GIS data to help map the trail.

This story first appeared in Gaea, the newsletter of the Association for Women Geoscientists, November-December 2006 issue.