As our department has no graduate assistants, I am responsible for all classroom preparation and the setting up and putting away of laboratories; and I am, of course, responsible for the grading of all student assignments. Throughout the week, I meet with students as their academic advisor, to assist them with assigned work and to supervise their research activities. I am the principal investigator or Co-PI on several grants, all of which require my attention during the week.

 

Although my classroom notes are complete, save for the addition of new information, I spend several hours each week preparing PowerPoint presentations for my classes’ Blackboard sites, as well as PowerPoints for classroom use. I am also the department’s unofficial graphic artist and prepare PowerPoints for the three sections of introductory geology.

 

Even though ECSU is called a “teaching university,” I am also active in scholarly research. For the 2005-2006 academic year, I produced (as author or co-author) six publications (two journal articles, two field guide articles, and two presentation abstracts) and made three professional presentations (two at ECSU and one at a professional meeting). I also serve on several committees (Career Services, Faculty Senate, Faculty Search Committee, etc.) and serve the community by visiting local schools — either for classroom presentations or as a science fair judge.

 

For each of my 16 classroom hours, there is at least an equal hour of preparation or grading time. Research, advising, and other academic endeavors add another 10 hours per week, including weekends when I do most of my PowerPoint and Blackboard work. This totals between 42 and 52 hours per week during an academic semester, for teaching duties alone.

 

My current research is on the Late Devonian Frasnian-Famennian extinction event, a mass extinction during which during which at least 70 percent of species vanished. A record of this event can be found in the rocks of the central Appalachian basin. I have been investigating this topic for over a decade, collecting fossils from outcrops in Virginia and West Virginia, and plotting the first and last occurrences of specific marker fossils that identify the boundary between the Frasnian and Famennian stages. These events dramatically affected the marine community. My research indicates a distinct difference in how shallow- and deeper-water faunas responded to the extinction, with deeper-water species surviving longer than the same species that lived in the shallow-water environments.