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Education
I've always been interested in biology. My first interest as a kid was in insects. Adults would ask me: "what do you want to do when you grow up?" I said: "I want to be an entomologist" and of course most of them didn't even know what that was.
In college I took a geology course and discovered that I liked geology too.
I saw paleontology as a blend of those two interests. I decided to do my graduate work in geology- which was a good decision. I did a master's and Ph.D. in geology but threading in a biological component all along the way.
I'm glad that I'm in geology because I saw the need for understanding chemistry, physics, biology, and computer applications to understand how those interact with one another to understand how the earth works as an entire system. I don't think I would have gotten that in biology- which is not to put it down, but I don't think it's emphasized enough for their purposes as a science. Geology gave me a more holistic view.
Why an advisor is sometimes more important than a big-name school
I had two great advisors- my master's and phd advisor were both great.
That's the most important things in a graduate education: picking the correct advisor- not the biggest name school- that's kind of silly, I think. Because I did my Ph.D. work at the university of Georgia. And a lot of people say, Well why didn't you go to an ivy-league school, and I said, Because I wanted to work with my advisor. And I didn't care what school he was at. It worked out fine.
Teaching
I usually tell my students, on the first day of class, my goal is for them to learn how to learn.
Geology, out of all the sciences, is the most eclectic. It uses a little bit of everything. It's interesting because we see all this fuss now about experiential learning and theory-practice learning- in geology we call that field work, and we've been calling it field work for 150 years.
In the fall I teach environmental geology, which is a big class. We typically have 60-80 students in it. It's for non-science majors: geology for the masses. They're all very proud that they're non-science majors, and they're very proud of their ignorance in science- and some of them say "I'm in this class because I don't think I can pass any other."
These are people that- this may be the last science class they ever take in their life. And I understand that responsibility from the first day.
It's a challenging class, and I like the challenge, because I go in there the first day and try to dispel a lot of preconceptions they might have about geology as a subject, or science in general. I start out by asking them: "how many of you signed up for this class because it's not biology, chemistry, physics, math or computer science?" I think I've been asking them that for the past five or six years, and a majority of the class raises their hand. And I say, "Well, I have good news for you: in this class we're going to cover not biology, chemistry, physics, math, and computer science."
Some people I think have the impression that because it's none of those it's an easy science, a soft science. You know, 'rocks for jocks' is the common name that's been given to geology classes. I point out right away that no, it's an integrative science... And secondly I talk about what science is.
The last several years I've put a major emphasis on teaching scientific methods throughout the semester, using geology as a focus: but what is science, what is not science, what is bad science?
Basically, I'm teaching them to have a b.s. detector. Seeing that this is their terminal science class, I want them to have a b.s. detector, so when a politician says "99% of these welfare cheats do this," you'll say "what is the source of your info? Is it cited from peer-reviewed scientific literature?"
For me, the most gratifying thing about teaching is when I see a light bulb go off. When I see that look in a student's eyes where it's like "they got it." Especially in a field situation where, in class, you talk about it all year, and they'll memorize it and spit it back- but you take them out in the field, and they see it and they explain it to you. That they get a concept to the point where they can explain it to you, and they can teach it to others.
Research
My insight is gained by looking at modern animals. There's a good 25-cent word we use in geology, it's called "uniformitarianism." It's a great word because we can't directly conduct an experiment on the past. But we can compare it, in all of its characteristics, to what we find today. And that sort of comparison is an experiment.
That's the main way I conduct an experiment- I have to keep one foot in the moderrn environments. I'm doing it every day- when I'm walking across campus I'm looking at leaves in trees.
I'm always looking at tracks- some of the sidewalks in Atlanta preserve wonderful tracks.
[Recently, Dr. Martin co-discovered a previously ignored phenomenon: fossilized dinosaur nests identifiable by traces of their physical presence, rather than preserved animal remains.]
Reptiles have been around for more than 300 million years- but nests, dug into sand, have only really been documented to 100 million years ago- so were they laying eggs out in the open for 200 million years? I seriously doubt that- eggs are a nice source of food.
We're saying that you don't need bones. Typically nests were identified on the basis of eggshell fragments and juvenile bones, and we're saying: 'you don't need those'- and you're not likely to have those. Because what if you have soft-shelled eggs, like sea turtles. Now, the nest structure, if dug deep enough, that's likely to be preserved. So this is a significant step forward in understanding the evolution of reproductive behavior.
To me, that's the most exciting part of my research is knowing, on a given day, hundreds of millions of years ago, what a critter was doing.
Courses Taught
Environmental Geology
Interdisciplinary approach to the interaction of humans with natural geological systems. Includes environmental science, geopolitics, energy systems, geological disasters, pollution and waste, natural resource economics, water resources and environmental law.
Modern and Ancient Tropical Environments Field Course
"A field course that goes to the bahamian field station; San Salvador Island in the Bahamas. (Taught every other year: the course meets once a week during the school year, and in late December or early January the students take a trip to the field station.)
"Immediately when I say we're doing a field course in the Bahamas, people say: "oh, pretty cushy" and I say "well, how well do you like caves? How well do you like hyper-saline lakes that are filled with every type of bacteria imaginable, and how much do you like hiking all day or swimming in open-ocean swells that are as big as 10 feet? It's not a cushy, lie-on-the-beach kinda course. It's a great opportunity to get real-life experiences collecting and observing scientific phenomena in a natural setting. A lot of it is observation of biological interactions with geological processes.
Topics of study in the course include the observation, description, and identification of organisms and the traces they leave, including invertebrates, algae, vertebrates, coral reefs, etc. Basic field-skills are also refined, including compass work, utilizing the Global Positioning System, "and a lot of how to deal with adverse situations."
For the undergraduate interested in paleontology
In my field it's really tight right now. Because the trend in geology has been towards environmental geology, in the past 10-15 years. So there aren't many paleontology jobs, especially tenure-track. So I would urge people going into this field for Ph.D. work, to be adaptable. Go ahead and do your Ph.D. in paleontology, but get lots of other training and experience that makes you adaptable. So in case you can't get that plum tenure-track position that you want, you have something to fall back on.
Other interests
Reading. All sorts of subjects. Getting together with friends a lot- especially the last few years. There's a group of friends I run with in the mornings, I just bike in here every day, close to campus. That's where I get a lot of socializing done, with them- we run at a conversational pace. Getting together in the evenings, traveling.
The great thing about geology is that you have to go to the rocks- they can't come to you. Five to six times a year I do some sort of geologically oriented field-trip.
The book project
I'm writing a textbook right now. It's on dinosaurs, it's for non-science majors, and I feel like I have a lot of background on that. It's an introductory textbook on dinosaurs for non-science majors. I'm halfway done with it.
The public has a lot of interest in dinosaurs- but in the same sentence they'll say: "but I'm not any good at science." What I'm actually trying to do is to show that people are contradicting themselves- that dinosaurs are a wonderful way to learn about science.
What needs to change at Emory
The first thing I would do is allow the non tenure-track faculty to have sabbaticals. I mean the so-called 'permanent temporaries.' The people who have been here more than seven years- I would give them sabbaticals, or the option for sabbaticals.
If I had a sabbatical I would not only finish my book, I would have 10-12 papers out, because I have 10-12 papers that are about 90% completed. And if I'm doing them just to satisfy my curiosity, there's not much incentive there, if teaching is my priority- which it is, teaching is my priority.
I know that the non tenure-track faculty here would use that time productively. I know they would use it for either improving their teaching or getting out their research, and some of their research is inter-related with their teaching. I think it would be a huge step forward for the college, if that happened.
Dealing with gender barriers in the classroom
Go to Sci-Trek anytime and you'll see lots of kids getting excited about science- and something happens in middle school, especially to women, so I try to make it more of a nurturing and positive experience.
How I deal with it is, once again being a good scientist, Pat Marsteller (director of the Emory Center for Science Education) gave me a great deal of literature on what studies have been done on k-12 as well as college education. And so the main thing I do with that now in my teaching is, I take my time.
Because I realized what I was doing before in my teaching was, I would ask a question for the class to answer, and I would pick the first person whose hand had gone up. And after I read those articles that Pat gave me I would wait five seconds, and I noticed that nine times out of ten, the first people with their hands up were the guys.
But I also watched the women in the class and realized they knew what the answer was- they were just thinking about it a little more. They were dwelling on it more. What I do now- this was the number one change I made to my teaching in the past few years, is I wait. Then I'll call on somebody who I see, 5 seconds later, raise their hand up.
The response evens out quite a bit- if I feel like it's getting imbalanced, I'll balance it out, with out them knowing it. And that I think helps a lot with giving confidence to the women in class. And a lot of them tell me they had an awful experience with science in middle school, and they've been kind of scared of science ever since then- and a lot of times that can be traced to a bad teacher.
On ego battles in academia...
I would have liked to have been in more situations where there was more concern with learning versus ego-gratification. An example of that would be when you get what are basically personality conflicts between people in graduate education. They're personal conflicts, but they're using their disagreements about science for their personality conflicts.
I would like to see more of a seperation of your work from you. I'm very careful to do that- it's hard to do that. But if somebody is criticizing my work, I want to take it as they're criticizing my work and not me.
That would be the number one thing I didn't like in my graduate education, was seeing people not separate themselves from their work, and not separating other people from their work.
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