What kick-started your passion for your major at UGA, geology?

My kick-start was really when I was younger. I would be that kid that would go to the beach, and I just really wanted to collect sand. I really wanted to just touch and feel all the things around me on the beach, so from a very young age, I knew that I just wanted to do something outside. I wanted to do something in nature. I’ve always been the outdoor girl.

What did being a teaching assistant at the University of Georgia entail?

This was my doctorate, and at doctorate level, they make you teach classes. Twice a week I had a group of students come to a lab, and I would present material to them. We would carry out real lab studies. But what’s funny is that even then, in grad school, the classes I was
teaching were for business majors who didn’t need or want science classes, but they had to have a science class.

Seeing as you discovered a new shell species, can you tell me a little bit about the discovery process and the shell itself?

That’s actually something I have forgotten about that I had done because it wasn’t something that I was out planning on doing. I was on an excursion. It was the Keys. I was just with a bunch of dive buddies, and we were collecting shells, which isn’t illegal. I spotted one, and I thought it was really pretty. I was like, ‘Oh, look at that. That looks really cool,’ so I pick it up, put it in my little container while we’re out diving and then back to the lab.

We’re all presenting our finds—our treasures—when one of the professors stops everything. And he’s like, ‘Oh my God, what’s that?’ and I’m like, ‘I don’t know. I found this, and I just thought it’s really cool.’

He was a taxonomist, so he named things–that was his jam–and he was like, ‘This is a new species. I can’t believe you found this.’ I had to right away surrender my shell. I thought I was gonna be able to keep it myself and put it on my windowsill.

And, no, I had to surrender it to him basically. He was a publisher of books, and I even have the book it was in because he gave it to me as a present. He takes pictures of them, makes stories, has books published, and he submitted it to the Smithsonian, and it was, and still is currently, a new species.

The crazy thing about this, too, is I’ve never thought of it as being cool or famous, because they can change, and especially with what we’re doing now with genetic testing. He said it was a new species, just by how it looked, what its shape and size was, but genetic testing now can really turn those kinds of theories and ideas upside down.

I’ve heard that you have snorkeled in the Great Barrier Reef and done a lot of backpacking. Can you tell me a little bit more about those experiences and some of the other environment-related activities you have participated in over the years?

I wasn’t actually scuba certified at the time, so I just snorkeled it. I was in high school. I was selected for an organization that no longer exists. It was called People to People… they would take underprivileged kids to different countries and meet diplomats. I got to go to Australia, and it was a two weeklong adventure.

We were able to do some really cool stuff, but it was stuff I did in high school. I couldn’t even believe it. My mom allowed me, when I was 14, to go to another country by myself. There were other people there, but it wasn’t with her. The Great Barrier Reef was absolutely amazing. It was really cool. But the sad thing was, the day that I was there, the Great Barrier Reef was in a bleaching event, so all the coral were white.

I remember we were in a glass bottom boat first, so they kind of gave us an explanation about where you’re going to be snorkeling, and there were people with us. Even at that time, I knew coral wasn’t supposed to be white… but there were people on the glass bottom boat with us that were like, ‘Oh, how beautiful. This is so pretty.’ In my head I was like, ‘No man, they’re dead.’ The guide picked up on it, and the guide was like, ‘No, we’re in a bleaching event right now.’

It’s really bad, but I did see giant clams that were the size of my head. There were so many fish, and it’s a massive structure, like it has very, very steep edges.

For hiking, I’ve done a lot of backpacking and hiking, and that’s because of my major, geology, which I think that in college, that’s what really made me want to do geology. Because I was like, ‘Oh, hey, this major requires you to go camping and hiking, and you have to go; it’s a class; it’s a grade.’ And I was like, ‘Um, okay, I will sign up for a college degree that makes me go on field trips. Yes, please.’

That was a no-brainer for me. I did a lot of geological studies outdoors. It would be students, and we’d go out to the field. We would read rocks. We would look at whole mountain sides, understanding geology formation, what kind of environments were there in the past based on fossils and really sediment identification.

So really, it’s training on how to read the land, like legit mapping land and knowing where things go. Then the underground too, even though you can’t see it, but being able to understand how this layered rock is actually going to go meters into the ground…

On the business aspect of it, I’ve been in a lot of different mines. I’ve been in a uranium mine—a functioning, working uranium mine—and that was really cool with geology and the environment. We got to learn how the processing of it works, the danger of it all, and at UGA we did a lot of beach morphology. We went to Sapelo Island, and we would do digs along the beach, and we would dig out to see how the different sediments layered onto the beach.

Are there any activities/ experiences that you really want to partake in the future?

I still have a major desire to go to Antarctica. My advisor at UGA, she had been to Antarctica, and I studied foraminifera, which are microorganisms. She was scuba diving with some really famous scientists because Antarctica is not just somewhere where everybody gets to go. You have to have formatting and permits. She got to scuba dive under the ice shelf in Antarctica.

She was like, ‘Oh, yeah, in three more years I’m gonna try to do it again. You’ll still probably be my PhD student, so we’ll go to Antarctica.’ Then I quit. I was like, ‘dang,’ but National Geographic has a ship that they run—it’s called Lindblad—and they take people on scientific expeditions. That was actually a job I was trying to apply to, and I never followed through because I got this job.

You work on a vessel, and you are a naturalist to tourists, but you go back and forth to Antarctica, and you’re working two months, you’re off a month…

Also, something as simple as I have not been to South America. I’ve been to Central America, but I want to look into more archeology stuff. My studies have always been the dead things, nonhuman, but some of that ancient culture, that’s super exciting too. I want to go to Machu
Picchu. I want to go see how these were indigenous people who moved boulders without gasoline, and it’s different tools. How did you do this? How’d you carve this out? They knew what rocks to use. There’s a multitude of different rocks in South America, some that are good for building, some that aren’t. These are people who are building ginormous structures. There’s a lot of just amazement there.

Have you conducted any research revolving around the environment? If so, what did you study, how did you go about it and what did you find?

I would say all my research was in college, and actually, that’s funny, I’ve been showing my students too. I have my master’s thesis, and my master’s thesis was the distribution and diversity of benthic foraminifera within the near shore ridge complex off Pompano Beach, Broward County. What I was looking at was distribution of microorganisms, these foraminifera, and seeing if their populations changed from the shore.

In Pompano Beach, we actually have three rows of corals, big reefs, and they’re not there anymore. They’re dead. That’s also a reason why I stopped doing science research in that aspect because it’s all dead. I was looking at their distributions or populations, and seeing if some species were missing from some of the reefs…

And another thing I was looking into was artificial reefs. I have a thing against artificial reefs. They are just garbage that we put into the ocean now, and it does draw in fish populations, but no corals live on it. No corals like to grow on it. That was another study it was hoping to do is to look at a kind of substrate or material corals like to grow on. And of course, that had been studied, it’s been well known. They like more porous stuff, not something that’s super slick, not metallic, which a lot of artificial reefs are just metal boats.

It’s kind of a thing where I was also looking into the politics of it; like we have here in Florida the artificial reef program, which is supposedly to conduct research and help create more coral habitat, but really all they’re doing is getting old ships off people’s hands and disposing of them for free for these people. Now, some of these ships are government, some of them are private, but it ended up being like a study, and I stopped doing it because it was just depressing…

There’s not good biodiversity on these artificial reefs. But a lot of my studies were ocean foraminifera. It was a big deal, which is funny too, because foraminifera is also a big oil company thing. I went for the ocean, not the oil… That was partially why I stopped my PhD… my research was dying, corals were dying.

What do you think is the most important thing for your students to take away from your class? How do you go about stressing the importance of that thing?

My biggest thing is always that I want my students to care about nature. Grades should not be your top focus. It should be the environment around you. It should be what you find passion in like I do. I tell my students every day, ‘go outside, just go outside. Stare at a tree, stare at the grass, stare at the sky, find a bird, identify something.’ Because I really do want younger people, and people in general, to be interested in nature. Just be interested in what you see and what’s around you. We end up staring at one thing for very long, but we never stare at nature for very long. We walk right past it. We ride our bikes right past it. We drive right past it.

I actually started riding my bike home from school now, so I have a little bit more time outdoors, and I’ve stopped a couple of times because I’m not racing home. I just want students to love outside and love something more than money. Love something more than grades. Love something more than just your own inner world. Really care about everything else.

How did you come to acquire the axolotl that was in your classroom last year? Have you had any other interesting pets?

The axolotl is at home, but he’s coming back after spring break… I have grass growing in my tank, and then I’m going fill it with water, and Nebula will be back after spring break. My first year teaching… I had students do a fish tank project where they had to convince me to get these animals… I was serious. I wanted detail… So I got hermit crabs, puffer fish and two axolotls.

On top of teaching about the environment, have you contributed in any way to helping the environment—whether that be through personal contributions, like dietary decisions, or scientific contributions?

They’re small tendencies. I don’t buy plastic water bottles. I would like to say there’s something I do because it’s so hard to be eco-friendly when what you’re provided with, what your options are, aren’t eco-friendly… Companies only give you what they give you. I’m a conscious consumer, so when I buy things, I consciously think about is this my best option? Can I get it somewhere else? Can I get it more local? When I get something when I’m on Amazon I try to make sure that I put ‘Made in USA,’ and that’s just because I know if it has to travel overseas, then that’s more fossil fuels that had to burn for this thing to get to here… I just find local Florida distributors of things. I would say my biggest thing is I try to buy local. I try to buy things that don’t have to travel far…

Eating food, I love my bacon. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to be vegan, but I’m conscious about it. I’m not every night having a steak. I try to make sure that I’m eating a balance of stuff, so it’s not an overuse of one type of food product… I’ll do thrift stores for furniture and things. My clothes—I try to make sure I know exactly where it’s coming from. I’ll look back at manufacturers. A lot of the stuff that I have comes from a company that refurbishes clothes.

This story was originally published in the May 2025 Eagle Eye print edition.