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AWG Outstanding Educator AwardsDr. Patricia Kelley - 2003 AWG Outstanding Educator“Her door is always open, as is her home for pizza.” This student comment is typical of the letters of support for this years Association for Women Geoscientists Outstanding Educator Awardee, who combines passion and compassion as she looks for every opportunity to stir curiosity in her students and to teach them about the earth. Dr. Patricia Kelley, Professor and past Chair of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Wilmington. A paleoentologist, her interests include the modes and rates of evolutionary change and origin of macroevolutionary patterns, which she investigates using Coastal Plain mollusks. In addition to being an inspiring and passionate educator Dr. Kelley is senior author of over thirty refereed papers, past-president of the Paleontological Society, the mother of two children and has been married for almost thirty years. Dinosaurs were the key to Dr. Kelley’s childhood interest in paleontology. At the age of seven her parents gave her a book about dinosaurs and shortly thereafter she was a frequent visitor to the dinosaur hall at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Some of her pictures were even hung in the museum. Like so many early dinosaur lovers, though, Dr. Kelley didn’t make the connection between dinosaurs and a career in the earth sciences. Fortunately her undergraduate advisor at the College of Wooster, Richard Osgood, was a paleontologist. Seeing a space in her schedule he suggested she take a geology course. As many of us who have had a similar experience can attest, that first exposure to college earth science was a life changing experience. After completing her undergraduate degree, she entered Harvard with an NSF pre-doctoral fellowship, receiving a Ph.D. under Steven J. Gould, four years later. She credits her scientific development to Gould who taught her to question scientific dogma and to always look for the anomaly. Surprisingly, he was also responsible for introducing her to the joys of teaching. From Harvard she began her teaching career in the Department of Geology and Geological Engineering at the University of Mississippi. She was the first and only woman in the School of Engineering, surrounded by engineers who had no clue about what a paleontologist does. To deal with this isolation, she turned to colleagues across the country for encouragement, developing relationships that enriched her life and career. Two colleagues in particular stand out. Anne Raymond, now at Texas A&M University, and Dr. Kelley were students together at Harvard and have remained friends and colleagues through the years. Thor Hansen, at the Western Washington University, has been a friend, collaborator and coauthor for the past fifteen years. Unlike many academics who spend their careers at a single institution, Dr. Kelley has been on the faculty at three different universities. After two years (1990-1992) at the National Science Foundation as Program Director for Geology & Paleontology and Geological Record of Global Change, she accepted the position of Professor and Chair of the Department of Geology and Geological Engineering at the University of North Dakota. In 1997, she left there to accept the position at UNC at Wilmington and has just stepped down from being departmental chair. Dr. Kelley has managed to combine her impressive professional career with a rich family life. In graduate school she married, Jonathan, a seminarian. Dr. Gould admonished her that, that she must not be content with “baking buns for the congregation.” Fortunately, her husband’s seminary supervisor, a woman, had the same idea. She had been one of the first women ordained as a Presbyterian minister, and convinced the couple of the importance of serving as role models for double-career couples. Realizing the difficulty of securing an academic job, Dr. Kelley’s career was the primary one for this two-career couple. He r husband accepted whatever church pastorate was available within commuting distance of the university. Their two children were born when they lived in Mississippi; Timothy, three years after Dr. Kelley began teaching, and Katherine just after tenure. Despite their busy lives and thanks to the flexibility of academic and pastoral careers they managed childcare and in the process raise two self-reliant and self-confident children. Her advise to couples trying to combine a career and family is to go for it, but it’s not easy. “Make sure the rest of the family share your goals and are willing to work with you on them (or at least make allowances for you). Realize that there will be conflicts – you may not publish as much as you wish, and you may miss some special events in your kids’ lives (I missed prom night for a Paleontological Society Council meeting!) but if you are all working together, they’ll understand.” Now, with the children almost grown, the Kelley’s have made some domestic changes. Her husband is now enrolled in a graduate program in pastoral counseling/psychotherapy in Manhattan. Dr. Kelley’s passion for teaching comes from interactions with her students and the opportunity for her to continue to learn. She loves to see students taking a course to fulfill a science requirement become engaged in paleontology and the transformation students undergo during their college career. “It’s hard to imagine a career that would allow me to use my talent and have so much fun at the same time.” When asked about advice for students considering pursing a career in the Earth Sciences, she suggests:
Acceptance Speech[The following is Dr. Patricia Kelley's acceptance speech upon receiving the 2003 AWG Outstanding Educator Award.]
When I told my daughter that I had to make an acceptance speech for my AWG Outstanding Educator Award, Katherine said, “It’s a good thing we watched those MTV Music Video Awards, so you’ll know what to do.” As you can tell from my clothes, which actually cover a fair portion of my body, I’m not going to follow too closely the MTV awards example. And, unlike those who receive awards for usually vulgar if not outright obscene videos, I’m not going to start off (rather ironically in my view) by saying, “First of all I want to thank God for helping me win this award.” The MTV artists are right, though. No one wins an award like this on her own. And so it’s only appropriate to take this opportunity to thank a few of the individuals who have meant so much to me as an educator and a scientist and in my personal life as well. I remember my excitement when Thor Hansen called and told me I had been selected to receive this award. I had received a letter from Suzanne O’Connell that day, but hadn’t opened it yet, assuming that it was just another piece of junk mail that regularly arrives on the desk of a department chair. I was thrilled and delighted by the news, and I extend my sincere gratitude to the committee for choosing me for this honor. I didn’t set out to be an educator. I didn’t even set out to be a paleontologist. But a concatenation of fortunate circumstances conspired to lead me in that direction (maybe I do need to thank God!). My parents indulged my early interest in dinosaurs, giving me a beautifully illustrated dinosaur book for Christmas when I was seven. I loved to paint, so immediately began to copy the illustrations in the book. Coincidentally, about this time a new dinosaur hall opened at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and my obnoxiously proud grandmother made me drag my paintings down to the Museum on opening day, where we showed the pictures to Museum director Bill Scheele. To my utter amazement, he commissioned more paintings and put them on display in the Museum for seven months! Now admittedly that does sound like I was a budding paleontologist, but, like so many young women, I forgot science by the time I reached high school. But circumstances again prevailed; when I got to the College of Wooster, the advisor randomly assigned to me was Richard Osgood, the campus paleontologist. And that first spring quarter, when I was looking for an elective, he suggested I try geology. It didn’t take long to resurrect my interest in fossils! Dick Osgood made me realize my potential in the field and challenged me to go on to graduate school (“Go to Harvard and study with the ‘boy genius’”, he said). So I applied to Harvard to work with Steve Gould, got in, and set off to pursue what for some reason I thought was a master’s degree. It took a few weeks before I discovered I was in a PhD program, but then I figured if Steve Gould thought I could get a PhD I might as well give it a try. (I never did admit my mistake to Steve.) Steve was the one who thought I could be an educator. It seemed like a horrible idea; I equated teaching with standing in front of a classroom and being tortured by evil little hellions (based on the way we had treated our substitute teachers in junior high). And I had an NSF predoctoral fellowship, so I didn’t need a teaching assistantship. But Steve signed me up as a TA in his Nat Sci 10 class. It was a great course; Steve talked about whatever he wanted (usually the topic of his latest Natural History essay – something esoteric that he managed to connect with some aspect of evolutionary theory, as only Steve could do) and he left the TA’s to teach the actual geology. And TAing that class convinced me that teaching was the most fun thing imaginable to do! By this time I had gotten married to my Wooster sweetheart, and Jonathan had begun his first of 26 years following me around the country. He went to seminary at Harvard Divinity School in order to be with me, even though good Presbyterians looked down on that heathen establishment. (He later got a D Min degree from Princeton to make up for the lack of Presbyterianism in his background.) There in the liberal environs of Harvard we decided that we had to be the vanguard of a new style of marriage, where both parents shared equally in childrearing and, if anything, the husband followed the wife’s career. I think Steve Gould was afraid we couldn’t pull it off -- I remember him admonishing me that I must not be content with “baking buns for the congregation.” And so I didn’t. I did end up teaching Sunday School and Youth Club and the women’s Bible study, as well as singing in the choir, which I didn’t mind (I love to teach and to sing). But I’ve never baked buns. And so this New York City boy followed me around the country, serving tiny churches within commuting distance (for me, that is) of my jobs at University of Mississippi, University of North Dakota (that was a switch), and now UNC-Wilmington, with a stretch at NSF as well. And we managed to get two kids virtually raised, although they did a lot of the raising themselves. It started with telling toddler Timothy, “First Mama has to do her very important college work, and then we’ll play pretend.” We all worked together; the kids knew what they had to do (let mama do her work and be nice in front of the parishioners), and we did it. (Katherine did get a little confused by the situation. When asked by her first grade teacher what she wanted to do when she grew up, her reply was, “I want to be a homemaker, like my dad.”) It wasn’t easy doing the two-career thing. I was really worried about whether I could have babies without jeopardizing my bid for tenure. You see, such a thing had never been done at the University of Mississippi, where I was the first and only woman in the School of Engineering, surrounded by male engineering colleagues who had no clue about what either a mother or a paleontologist does. From this position of relative isolation, I turned to colleagues across the country for encouragement and collaboration. Though I have worked with a number of individuals, two in particular stand out. Anne Raymond (of Texas A&M) and I were students together at Harvard and we’ve remained friends through the years and coauthored several papers. For the past 15 years Thor Hansen (Western Washington University) has been my coauthor and close friend. We’ve had a great time doing research together, we’ve commiserated on the trials of university administration, we’ve shared the joys of watching each other’s kids grow up, and have encouraged each other through all of life’s challenges. These relationships have greatly enriched my career and my life. Through my work with the Paleontological Society and other professional organizations, I’ve also developed supportive relationships with Carl Stock (Alabama), Bill Ausich (Ohio State), Tom Kammer (West Virginia) and Chris Maples (DRI). Each of these individuals has enhanced my life. And then there are the students. I love working with students, getting them excited about science, involving them in my research, and watching their transformation as they move through their college or graduate school careers. I have been blessed with a long line of (primarily master’s) students who have energized and challenged and entertained me. (The latter is particularly important.) They have always been very patient with me, putting up with references in my classes and on my exams to whatever my current fetish is, from Monty Python to Devo to Johnny Depp. It’s a great joy to have two of these outstanding students here today; Carol Lutken was one of my first students, and Greg Dietl was one of my most recent, and both have been good friends as well as collaborators. And so these are the people I would thank if I were at the MTV Music Video Awards:
I should close by saying something inspirational. Perhaps what I’ve said already will inspire younger women in geoscience to realize that it is possible have a successful career in the geosciences without giving up the joys of marriage and children. (It’s not easy but it can be done, especially with the support of family and colleagues.) I hope I can also motivate others to aspire to excellence as educators. From my perspective, an outstanding educator is someone with a passion for sharing the excitement of her field with others – from second grade classes studying a unit on dinosaurs, to middle school teachers trying to increase their knowledge of and interest in science, to the traditional college undergraduate and graduate students. An outstanding educator does many things: she stirs a curiosity in her students; she teaches them to use the tools of the discipline; she enables them to learn by doing; she teaches them to think critically and to question conventional ideas. Her job doesn’t end when she steps out of the classroom; she teaches in the field, on the phone, in the car traveling to meetings, and at social events. (Greg Dietl even met with me at the oral surgeon’s to discuss his dissertation while Katherine was having her wisdom teeth removed.) An outstanding educator is passionate and compassionate, committed to her students’ personal and professional growth. She herself is always learning. That’s why being a geoscience educator is so much fun! My humble thanks to AWG for giving me an award for doing what I love to do! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Comments? Questions? Please contact Heather Henkel - Webmaster Last modified: 05 September, 2005 @ 02:27 PM |
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