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Maria L. Crawford, Department of Geology

"If I had my way, all Bryn Mawr students would become geologists.  I can say that because I have so much fun doing it.

"I like helping people figure things out, making students aware of something they've not been aware of before. Why does a particular rock occur where it does? Why does it have the appearance it does? What is its history? Answering these questions can lead to addressing an issue like how we can ensure an adequate water supply, so there's a very practical side to geology.
 

Dr. Crawford's current research and professional background

"My research is solving the history of a mountain belt by looking at as many different aspects as possible of the kinds of rocks, the time the rocks formed, the location in which they formed, the way the earth moved. The total time span for the mountain belt I study is from 110 million years ago to the present.

"What difference does it make? Aside from practical answers, understanding earth history is the reason. Each of us is - or should be - concerned about environmental issues, and we can't really understand them without knowing about the interaction between earth's processes and the impact of people who live on the surface of the earth. Mostly, however, I do it because it's there, and I want to understand it.

"A good geologist has an active imagination. You have to be willing to come up with a hypothesis based on less than complete data. Unlike, say, chemistry, we can't easily conduct our research in the lab. We have to see what is there and use our best scientific reasoning to decipher the connections and relations that make the earth work.

"Geologists enjoy being outdoors; we like dirt, we like tents, we like to travel. We like exploration, and some of us are less comfortable with mathematics and quantitative reasoning than, say, physicists. We're more philosophical - meta-thinkers. The natural history side of the story appeals to us.

"Geologists tend to be easy going. We're dealing with thing that don't happen fast and with problems that take a long time to solve. A geological puzzle can't be solved in two to three weeks.

"Being a geologist means relying on everything you know, all you've learned, to construct an answer. I can see only one-twentieth and then I have to have the daring to make up the rest. Consequently, you can't ever know if you have the right answer. Geologists will never say they're right, knowing that someone else may come along and have a different piece of knowledge and therefore a better answer.

"Most Bryn Mawr geology majors start in science, most of them in geology. Recently, the largest proportion of our graduates work on environmental issues for consulting companies or government agencies. The next biggest group of graduates go to
graduate schools, and many of those end up as academics.

Professor Crawford was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, popularly known as the genius award, in 1993.  She is also the first scientist to be named the Association for Women Geoscientists Foundation Outstanding Educator. She has been a National Science Foundation Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and a Fulbright Fellow.  Professor Crawford serves on numerous review panels, among them the National Science Foundation, the United States Geological Survey, and the World Book Encyclopedia Physical Sciences Consultant Committee.  She's on the editorial board of the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America and Computers and Geosciences.  Her research in Pennsylvania and British Columbia and Alaska has been supported with over $300,000 in grants from the National Science Foundation.  She received her Ph.D. in Geology from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Richard S. Davis, Department of Anthropology

The islands that form the Aleutian chain off the southwestern Alaskan coast are rich in marine life - sea  lions, salmon, seals - and home to the busiest fishing port in the
country, as well as to many active volcanoes.  It's here that Professor of anthropology Richard Davis plans to spend six weeks this summer with students doing archaeological field research with Rick Knecht, Ph.D.'95.  The Margaret Bay site on Unalaska Island is at least 4,500 years old and provides a wealth of information about its early inhabitants.  "It's an important site because it reflects the genesis of the Aleut and Eskimo peoples," says Professor Davis. According to him, the site also represents the beginning of the Arctic Small Tool tradition, a tool making tradition that eventually stretches across North America and reaches as far as Greenland.  In addition to numerous well crafted stone tools, Professor Davis's finds include the earliest artworks discovered in the Aleutians.  His research is funded in part by the City of Unalaska, the Ounalashka Corporation, and Bryn Mawr College, and he hopes to continue his research on this island for many summers to come.  "There's a lot of important archaeology there," he says, "and I'm having a great time."

A Paleolithic archaeologist, Professor Davis (Ph.D, Columbia University) has also conducted field work in several Asian locations with particular focus on northern Afghanistan, southern Tajikistan, eastern Turkey, and central Siberia.  His basic research interests center on the study of human adaptations to the changing environments of the Pleistocene and Holocene, and also on the development of technology in its social context.  His teaching interest have grown out of his research activities, and her regularly offers courses in Paleolithic Archaeology, Traditional Technology, Human Ecology, Food and Human Bio-Cultural Evolution (with Janet Monge), and Method and Theory in Archaeology

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Karen Greif, Department of Biology

"I always loved exploring the world around me and asking questions
 about it.  I finally decided to be a scientist in college since I really loved
music as well.  Science, these days, doesn't leave room for amateurs,
which is unfortunate because very good science has been done by amateurs - Mendel, Darwin, a host of naturalists among them.  Now from an early age kids get the sense that science is hard and esoteric because that's what our system teaches them.  But, really, whenever kids ask questions about the world they're asking scientific questions.

"When things go badly in my lab I mutter that I should have been a musician, but I know that if I were a professional performer music wouldn't have the same emotional value it now has for me.  It would cease to be an escape from the rigors of science.

"The most wonderful thing about being a scientist is, well, here I am, puttering around in my lab exploring questions I'm interested in answering - advanced sandbox really - and people pay me to do this! It's certainly not work as I imagine work to be.  I know a lot of people who hate their jobs, and I don't feel that way at all.

"Introducing students to the joys - the joys and the frustrations - of science and watching them grow as scientists, seeing them become sophisticated and discover they can do it, is very rewarding.  The actual act of doing science is gender neutral.  There's only one way to do it - properly.

"For students, however, being in classes dominated by women frees them from the anxiety of uncertainty and frees them from being intimidated.  Men are better at putting on a front even when they know no more than women know.

"Look at the messages we send girls - I mean, a talking Barbie who says 'Math is hard!'  That's just the kind of stereotype we don't need to perpetuated.

"Women's colleges do offer a more encouraging environment for women.  Women who go to college knowing they want to be scientists probably don't need women's colleges.  More important than the single-sex setting is that Bryn Mawr and other women's colleges offer the opportunity to learn and do science in a more intimate setting; although Bryn Mawr must be doing something nurturing for women since we have three to five times the national average of women science majors.  But our small size is also very, very, important.  From the time a student decides her major she will be guided here.  She'll work with faculty.   The faculty numbers at research universities simply don't allow that interaction to happen.

"Several undergraduates are doing projects on my funded research program. They're really part of the team.  And they're doing real research.  Several have been or will be my co-authors on publications.

"Most of our majors go to medical, graduate, or veterinary schools.  Some take time off and work as research assistants for a while, but the majority of them do go on to further training.  Bryn Mawr's biology department has a long track record of producing eminent academicians.  Certainly since I've been here a number of students have gone on to get Ph.D.s, postdocs, and good jobs.  They do well.

"One of the most enjoyable aspects of my job is the chance to get to meet alumnae from the '30s, '40s, and '50s - I can see what brilliant, dynamic, wonderful women they've turned out to be, and it's exciting to think my current students will be like these women when they're older."

Professor Greif's research on age-related changes in neuroplasticity in neonatal, adult, and aged animals has been supported by close to half a million dollars in research funds from the National Science Foundation: Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Association; and the National Institutes of Health.  Her interest in undergraduate research collaborations has been funded by the Pew Program in Undergraduate Education: Collaborative Research Program, and she served on the National Science Foundation Review Panel.  Among her numerous professional activities she is past president of the Society for Neuroscience, Philadelphia Chapter, and is a reviewer for Science, Neuroscience Letters, and the Journal of Neurochemisty.  An accomplished musician, Ms. Greif plays the oboe and English horn with the Chamber Music Society of Bryn Mawr College and can be found, from time to time, in the pit orchestra of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Chester County, Pennsylvania.  She earned her Ph.D. in psychobiology and biochemistry from the California Institute of Technology.

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Ann Herzig, Department of Biology

Research Interests

  Population Ecology
  Conservation Biology
  Insect dispersal
  Population dynamics
  Impact of exotic organisms on native communities

Long-distance movement of organisms among habitat patches may influence population dynamics in fundamental ways. For example, high levels of dispersal among habitat patches may synchronize the dynamics of separate patches and create widespread, dramatic population fluctuations, whereas low levels of dispersal may isolate populations such that they fluctuate out of synch. Low levels of dispersal may also mean that recolonization is unlikely if these isolated populations go extinct. As habitat is increasingly fragmented by human activities, understanding the role of dispersal in population dynamics has become a pressing issue. We are conducting field studies of the dispersal biology of phytophagous beetles in the genus Trirhabda (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae). Of the 26 species in North America, some live in small, isolated habitat patches, whereas others live on hosts that occur in larger, more continuous habitats. We are comparing the dispersal behavior of these closely related beetles in different settings to understand the interplay between habitat configuration, dispersal behavior, and population dynamics.
 

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Janice Newberry, Department of Anthropology

A professor of Anthropology, Newberry does cross-cultural work on political economy and gender; she has done research specifically on the nexus of state formation, community, domesticity and gender in urban working class Java; and has research interests in environment and political ecology, including recent interest in community mapping and gendered space.  Her future research will focus on the use and mapping on natural and cultural space in Imogiri, Central Java, Indonesia.

 
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Don Barber, Department of Geology

"My research deals with thesources, transport and deposition of Quaternary sediments in coastal and deep marine environments.  My recent work has included detailed radiocarbon dating of marine carbonates from the Hudson Bay region of northeast Canada and the application of radiogenic isotopic tracers (Sr, Nd, and Pb) to track the provenance of glacial-marine sediments deposited in the Labrador Sea during the last ice age.  The broad impetus for both of these paleooceanographic studies is to help understand the glacial and oceanographic influences that contributed to abrupt global climate changes during the last 30,000 years."

"The inferences from this work in turn relate to our expectations and predictions regarding possible climate change in the future.  In addition to continuing isotopic studies of the glacial provenance of North Atlantic deep-sea sediments, I am now returning to an earlier interest in applied coastal geology and geomorphology.  My previous coastal and fluvial studies were carried out on the North Carolina and Maine coasts; the New Jersey shore will be the target of future projects.  My coastal work pertains to the geomorphologic responses of coastlines to sea level rise.  Along some coastlines, humans are major geomorphologic agents; therefore, I am also interested in coastal and environmental management policies."

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Gary McDonogh, Department of Growth and Structure of Cities
 

 
 

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