Q: You've been house fellows for four years? You must like it!
A: We love it. We absolutely love it. We're sort of on overtime in a way, because the usual term is three years, but we're already into our fourth. It's nice to have the full cycle, to watch our freshman graduate!

Q: So what do you like about house fellowing?
A: I love being part of a community. Our apartment is right next to the house kitchen, so we see a lot of students in their leisure moments. Nobody is in the kitchen saying, “Oh my god, I'm so nervous about my test!” They're cooking, they're relaxing, they're socializing. We like interacting with the students informally and being part of their lives, and being next to the kitchen makes that possible because invariably they knock on our door looking for a spatula, or sugar, or something like that. When I'm cooking in the apartment, I leave the door open, and people who are interested in cooking will pop in and have a taste of whatever I'm making or sometimes even help me cook. One student helped me make a bunch of pesto. So being next to the kitchen is great.

Q: Do you get to see a different side of students?
A: Absolutely! You have relationships with students that you'd never have if you only saw them in class. There's one student who's become sort of a part of our family. I've read all of the Harry Potter books out loud to our family, and he loves Harry Potter. Over the summer, he called and said, "So did you see the fifth movie? And did you get the seventh book?" And we called him when we finished the seventh book. There's another student who loves to cook, so we talk about cooking, and I got a great butternut squash recipe from him. And there was another student whose dog died, and she was really sad, so she came down to hang out with us and play with our dog Molly. So you feel like you serve a purpose in their lives. I just like seeing the fullness of their lives and connecting with them on a much more personal level. I like that they can see my whole life, too, not just me as an educator, but me as a partner and as a parent. I feel like I'll know these students forever, the ones we've formed close bonds with. And that really matters to me.

Q: How about Caleb and Tillie? Do they like living in the dorm?
A: Caleb and Tillie love it. The other house fellows, Fubing Su and Xiuli Zhang, have two kids, and their older daughter is Tillie's age, so that's been great, having kids right down the hall to play with. And it's so great for their independence. They can take their meal card and walk over to the dining hall by themselves and get themselves something to eat. Caleb knows his way around the campus. He can fend for himself, ride his bike around — and it's been really great for him. The students take them seriously as people, so our kids think they're really cool because they live on a college campus, and they have their older friends, and they have a sense of independence.

It's also great for our kids because Vassar students are not like seven-year-olds who say, “Wow, you have two moms?” They don't say that. Nobody in the dorm skips a beat. So for our kids, it's the one place in the world where they don't get a reaction, and that's great for them.

Q: So you are a metamorphic petrologist? What does that mean?
A: Well, actually, I'm a sedimentologist. I did my doctoral work in metamorphic petrology, which is basically the study of mountain belts, and I was hired as a metamorphic petrologist in my first teaching job at Pomona College. I got tenure there, but I didn't want to stay in California, and I didn't want to spend my life researching things like where the San Gabriel Mountains were located 350 million years ago. I knew that there were real problems, environmental issues that I felt I could have some impact on.

It's sort of a long story, but I changed my field of research to focus on surface processes and environmental issues. So, for example, one of the courses I developed here at Vassar was funded by an NSF grant — an interdisciplinary course called Earth Science and Environmental Justice. And in that course we looked at the environmental problems around the world and how race, class, and gender issues intersect with those problems.

Q: Don't you have another book coming out?
A: Yes! It's another collection of essays titled For the Rock Record: Geologists on Intelligent Design Creationism, and it's about the controversy between science and religion from the perspective of geologists. The University of California press will be releasing it to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species in 2009. My first book, which came out in 2003, was a collection of essays on the geology behind environmental issues titled The Earth around Us: Maintaining a Livable Planet.

Q: How did you first become interested in geology?
A: Well, I grew up in Queens. My parents were schoolteachers. My mother was a librarian; my dad was a gym teacher and a science teacher and then an administrator. But from before I was born, my parents worked at a summer camp near here in Kingston — Camp Woodcliff, which is now a 4-H camp called Camp Madison. So every summer from 1959 — the year I was born — until 1974, we would schlep every summer up to Camp Woodcliff.

Actually, my first geographical recollection is crossing the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge. When we crossed the bridge, I knew we were getting close, and to this day, when I cross the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge, I get this thrill, because it reminds me of my childhood. We have friends who live not far from Woodstock, and when we go see them, we pass the place where you turn off to go to Camp Woodcliff, and I like everybody to be quiet in the car. I turn off the radio — can everybody please just be quiet so I can have my Camp Woodcliff moment? So even though I grew up in New York City, this feels like home to me.

You know the kinds of activities they've got in summer camp? They've got arts and crafts, fencing, swimming — but they also have the activity of "nature." I always signed up for nature. In nature, you'd go to the nature cabin and you'd play with the little critters, and sometimes you'd go on a hike in the Sawkill Creek. We'd collect crayfish and we'd bring them back, we'd put them in the nature cabin, we'd go on hikes, we'd look at leaves. So for me, nature was an activity that you would sign up to do; it wasn't like something that existed out there. My favorite activity of all, the high point of my year — well, two high points. The daytime high point was Gold Rush, where they painted rocks yellow, and you had to stay in your cabin while the counselors drove around in a truck and distributed all these rocks all over Camp Woodcliff, and then they'd ring the bell and you'd run out with your pillowcase and collect as many of these rocks as you could. Then they'd set up the gold rush station — they'd weigh your rocks, and then you got Casino Night money. I didn't care much about Casino Night, but I loved rushing around and collecting the rocks.

The evening high point was nighttime rope hikes in the stream. We'd hike up the stream with flashlights, holding onto the rope, and look at the night stuff in the stream — it was so fun. So I think I really got interested in geology then.