I am a professor emeritus of geology at Appalachian State University where I was a faculty member from 1968 until I retired in 2004. My undergraduate degree is from Duke University and my graduate degrees are from Virginia Tech. Although I have taught many different courses at Appalachian, at present my only instructional activities involve the geology department's summer field course in Italy. For the past three years I have been doing geologic mapping in SW Virginia's Valley and Ridge area under USGS StateMap grants administered through Virginia's Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy.
My principal geological interests are in soft-rock geology and structural geology. I have studied and taught these subjects primarily in southwest Virginia's Valley and Ridge, northeastern People's Republic of China, and northern Italy's Dolomites. In addition to my normal academic year teaching schedule, I also have taught geology summer field courses in southwest Virginia for Virginia Tech (20 years) and currently Appalachian State University's course (8 years and counting) in northern Italy. Teaching geology in the field has always been my favorite professional activity.
My hobbies are very much related to geology and include backpacking, hiking, photography, videography, travel, reading, and foreign languages. Not so much out of necessity as by choice, since 1984 I have maintained a rather strong interest in the use of computers in teaching. I am especially interested in using computers to help bring the field into the classroom by means of video clips and other images. As there is no substitute for actually going into the field, I believe that computers are best used to prepare students for field work and to help them synthesize and process the data they collect in the field.
Go to photos of Virginia Tech geology field camps from 1965-1984
This page was last updated on 31 August 2005