Following up on
a tip from a friend at the Virginia Museum of Natural History, Tennant went beyond
the press releases and media conferences to learn why the U.S. Geological Survey
(USGS) was drilling the site of a buried impact crater on NASA property in southeastern
Virginia. She visited with David Powars of the USGS and immediately knew she was
on to something larger than a one-day news story. 
Monastersky won the
David Perlman Award for his news story “A Plucky Spacecraft Explores a Distant
Asteroid,” published March 2, 2001. “I’d never watched a spacecraft
land on an alien world before,” Monastersky says. “And I wasn’t
reporting during the Moon landing,” he laughs. When the Near Earth Asteroid
Rendezvous (NEAR) Shoemaker probe landed softly on Eros last year, Monastersky
witnessed the event surrounded by scientists, engineers and other journalists
in the auditorium at the Johns Hopkins laboratory in Laurel, Md. Monastersky followed
the story of the “plucky” probe’s adventure to the distant asteroid
and its unexpected survival after the landing. 
Then the rules
changed and, at age 18, Crain needed two years of college to pursue his dream.
He was fresh out of high school traveling Europe with flying aces. Rather than
leave the Thunderbirds, he finished his three-year commitment with the Air Force
before turning to the University of Minnesota in Duluth. Bill Crain stands atop Haleakula in Hawaii. Crain retired from Chevron as a director and vice president in charge of worldwide exploration and production.
In the spring of 1953, Crain was ready to graduate and move on to flying school. But he had one science credit he had to fill before he could receive his bachelor’s degree in business and economics. He chose a course in geology with professor Robert Heller.
Crain changed his mind and decided to become a geologist. “I’m an outdoors person,” Crain says. “The general geology course Bob taught fascinated me. He was charismatic and lit up like a light bulb whenever he had a rock in his hand. We would take field trips around Lake Superior, and I switched to geology because of his overall enthusiasm and dedication as an educator.”
But in order to get into graduate school in geology, Crain needed a few more science credits. That summer, he got married and went back to college. “I took all my geology courses from Bob Heller.” After two years, Crain had two bachelor’s degrees and two kids to boot. He and his family moved to Minneapolis where Crain earned his master’s degree in geology metallurgical engineering. Crain then began a lifelong career as a geologist with Chevron.
In March, the American Geological Institute (AGI) awarded Crain and the late Bob Heller its William B. Heroy Jr. Award for distinguished service. Together Crain and Heller generated the vision and support for AGI’s inquiry-based, secondary-school Earth science curricula.
In 1992, Heller had contacted Crain with a proposal. “He came to me dissatisfied with high school textbooks on geology,” Crain says. “He was interested in inquiry-based teaching, not handing the students stuff to memorize.” Crain had the contacts at Chevron to help fund the project.
In 1993, however, Heller died from cancer. Three years ago, Crain saw the development of the project come to fruition after leading an AGI Foundation drive to raise $2.5 million in support of the new curriculum. “Bob gave me 12 principles to embody in geologic education, and AGI was active in working with NSF in developing these principles,” Crain says. “He set me on the path to raise the money, and we achieved what he had envisioned.”
AGI’s Investigating Earth Systems is now adopted in 26 states. Middle-school teachers can use the nine-unit program as a full course presented in any order or as stand-alone modules in class. The initiative also jump-started AGI’s high school curriculum, EarthComm, and a teacher’s guide for Investigating Earth Systems.
“You know a lot of geologists became what they are because of an enthusiastic and gifted educator,” Crain says. The key is exposure. “And that’s true in other fields as well, it happens quite often throughout education. I encouraged my own children to take as wide a variety of courses as they can, to find out what they really like. If you pick a career based on what you really like to do and not because of money and what not, you’ll succeed because you’ll be doing what you enjoy.”
