Links to op-eds, book, and science writings
I'm a geophysicist who looks at water issues. I also write about education. How did that happen?
First the geophysics thing. It's not exactly something you decide you're going to do when you're a kid. For me and almost everyone else, becoming a geophysicist is a circuitous journey.
Here's the path I took. I started out as an opera singer in college, but decided I didn't have the talent to succeed. I was always good at math and thought briefly about going in that direction; a Ph.D. mathematician friend of mine convinced me that was a dead end. Then I turned to comparative literature. However, the culture of the humanities was just way too nasty and snobbish for my taste. I decided to stick to reading fiction as a hobby. I met a geophysics professor by chance. Geophysics seemed like a good way to combine my love of the outdoors with my love of math. And it was.
From about 1979 to about 1997 I was a full tilt science geek. I was good at it, was a professor at Duke University from 1990 to 2005, and received tenure in 1996. I've won a bunch of awards for my research.
Now on to how I became an education writer. Having been in colleges either as a student or professor for many years, I had some ideas about how higher education needed to change its ways. In the mid-1990s, I started to write articles about issues in higher education. Surprisingly to me, respected venues readily published them. I wrote a book. It got published as well. I collected data on college grades in a way that no one else had before (why no one else did this before me I still don't understand) and somehow became America's de facto grade inflation czar.
Along the way, I left Duke. Most people would have kept a job like that for life. But academia is a place that tends to attract very unhappy people. Who wants to be surrounded by miserable people every work day?
Above you'll find links to op-eds, books, and (through my CV) science papers. I still write about higher education in my blog, Forty Questions. I still put on my science hat and consult on water issues.