TEACHING
Tom talking about the role caldera ring fractures may have played in shaping the course of the Owyhee River, Oregon (2012 photo courtesy of Janet Rasmussen).
Holistic geoscience education requires integration of classroom, field, and laboratory work. As an adjunct professor at New York University and teaching assistant in Stanford undergraduate courses, Tom has witnessed how multifaceted approaches to education results in improved retention of material and engagement of students. Field education is Tom's passion; he taught a Stanford undergraduate course on the geology of the California Gold Rush, co-led the 2014 Harvard undergraduate field trip to Hawaii, and was a guest lecturer on the 2012 Friends of the Pleistocene trip. Tom has also designed a field mapping course integrating traditional mapping methods with XRF laboratory work, and is planning a geology rafting trip through volcanic and sedimentary stratigraphy of the Owyhee River.
Tom teaching undergraduates about caldera collapse on the flank of Kilauea, Big Island, Hawaii (2014 photo courtesy of the Harvard EPS Department).
MENTORSHIP
Stanford undergraduate student Emily Williams (class of 2016) was a field assistant for Tom during three different field seasons. Tom advised her as she mapped a 7.5-degree quadrangle in southern Oregon as part of an EDMAP grant he co-wrote with advisor Prof. Gail Mahood.
Tom advised undergraduate student Maxine Luckett during the course of her field and laboratory research at Stanford University. Her research focused on the geochemistry and geochronology of rhyolitic fall and ignimbrite deposits intercalated in Steens Basalt lavas.
During her time as Tom's field assistant in Summer 2015, Harvard undergraduate Rachel Hampton (class of 2017) learned fundamentals of volcanology and field mapping. She wrote an honors thesis in volcanology/igneous petrology at Harvard University and is now a Ph.D. student at the University of Oregon.