Abbey:
I am currently an assistant professor at California State University,
Long Beach.
Charbonneau:
What is the focus of the research and courses you are working with?
Abbey:
Our university has three main field courses. We have an intro, an
intermediate and a summer, kind of capstone, field course. I teach
components of all those. I often will teach all those field courses. I
also teach structural geology and our geology writing and communications
course. I started a new course here that is all about geoscience
careers, learning about the careers, and education and extra stuff that
you must do to get some of those careers. That is a two-part course
where one part is learning about it and figuring out your education. The
other one is networking, answering interview questions, writing a cover,
letters, and resumes. Those are my regular courses or at least what I
have already done.
Charbonneau:
The other thing I wanted to clarify just for context is when did you
start teaching at Cal State University Long Beach?
Abbey:
My first semester teaching was the spring semester in January of 2021.
This is the beginning of my 4th semester.
Charbonneau:
When did you complete your most recent degree program?
Abbey:
My most recent degree was a PhD, and I did that at the University of
Michigan. I finished that in 2018. I was doing a postdoc when the
pandemic hit so I finished that and started here.
Charbonneau:
Can you elaborate on the nature of your research and how your postdoc
was disrupted by the pandemic?
Abbey:
My research has three components. I do a fair amount of field work, a
fair amount of lab work, and a fair amount of computational work. In
general, I do large-scale tectonic surface process type interactions.
Seeing how tectonics affect mountain building and fault growth really. I
did my postdoc at the Berkeley Geochronology Center, which is very
closely affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley. They
have all these lab facilities, that is where I would do all the rock
separation, chemical separation, and then the actual dating.
Prior to the pandemic, I went to the field two or three times a year,
and those trips usually ranged from one week to one month at a time.
Then I would come back and essentially spend a lot of time in the lab
processing all the samples collected in the field to get ready for doing
geochronology and thermochronology.
When the pandemic hit, field travel, international and local, and all
the lab stuff shut down for me. The Berkeley Geochronology Center was
100% shut down in March. It was not until November that we were allowed
to start going back in, very minimally with one person a day in the
whole facility.
We had to schedule that between all the researchers who are trying to
use the facility and everybody who obviously lost six months’ worth of
lab time. Things slowed down for me a lot because I was just starting. I
had started a year and a couple of months prior to that. I had enough
time to go out into the field, collective bunch of stuff, and start
working on it, but not actually get any data yet. It really brought a
bunch of my field and data projects to a screeching halt. That is when I
had to think about what else to do.
There was obviously other stuff for those projects that was background.
Oh, let me gather more data and read some more papers. Let me make some
maps in GIS, things like that. But it is all kind of cursory. It was not
like that helped me move the project along. It was more like I just was
waiting. So instead, I tried to push everything into the modeling side
of projects that I do and so I changed everything up and focused hard on
a lot of the modeling stuff.
Created some new projects just entirely based off modeling and then it
was not until right before I started here, that the lab started opening
back up again. There were two main projects that I had going on when I
was a postdoc, and nothing happened to them for seven or eight months.
Then I moved here. Because I started my new position and started
teaching, they also stopped again. I just had to wait until I got caught
up and figured out everything here before I could start working on them
again. This summer is when I was able to get back to those projects, I
had originally started in 2019.
That was rough, but it really helped me realize that you can produce a
lot of other projects that are computer based for scenarios like this.
It turns out that that has been awesome for getting students involved in
research. Since I have started here, I have had students who really
wanted to do research, but one of them got surgery on their foot and
then six months later had to get surgery on their other foot. They knew
it was planned and they really wanted to do research. But all the stuff
I was offering was field walking. But because of what happened during
the pandemic, I was able to produce some great projects that involved
only computers and the kind of background research that the student was
able to work on. It really made me become much more creative with making
projects accessible to a lot of different people.
At the time I was like: “Oh no, I cannot do this. Everything is shut
down, I cannot go to the field, cannot go to lab,” and then suddenly, it
is like, well, just think about it now. I can do all these other
projects and they are just as successful. As much as it was scary to
start with, it turned out to be a cool way that opened a lot of doors to
research.
Charbonneau:
What kind of modeling were you doing and what programs were you using in
terms of technology?
Abbey:
The stuff that I started getting deep into was modeling of thermal
histories. This is a big component of thermochronology and in the
thermochronology community. There are two main programs that have a nice
user interface and are intuitive. It does not involve a lot of coding.
People can still do thermal history modeling on their own with their own
written codes and stuff like this. But most of the community uses these
two programs. One is called “HeFTy” and the other one is called “QTQt.”
The community is funny in the sense that, if you use HeFTy, you do not
use QTQt, but they do the same thing. They just have a different
statistic in terms of the way they choose their models and modeling
predictions. They are each program created by a single person, a single
researcher, and then used by everyone else. Because the people doing
thermochronology and trying to interpret thermochronology data is
getting so much larger, many people use the programs and try to run the
models without knowing what they are doing.
What we ended up doing is doing tons of modeling projects where we were
assessing inputs and changes to modeling parameters and how that affects
the resultant predictions, or output models. We created a tutorial for
the community that we presented in a workshop at the international
thermochronology meeting that happens every two years, so we did that.
We made that tutorial and educational product and ran that workshop.
Then we ended up writing two papers about it that are now in
“Geosphere.”
The modeling was focused on the uses for these two different programs.
How do they compare to each other, but not necessarily right or wrong
comparisons. More like if you change this and this program, what will it
do if you change this in this program? What will it do and how do you
optimize which one you use and when? That was fun. I do that kind of
modeling all the time. For all my data and do not really get into the
super nitty gritty details.
But we did this project and eventually did sensitivity testing. What if
you change this, what happens? What if you changed this? It was
eye-opening. Many people do not know these kinds of things are affecting
their models. They will either say: “Oh it does not work, and I will not
use it.” Or they will publish something where they have no idea why it
looks the way it looks.
It was this call that the community was looking for anyway. We are
growing, a lot more people are doing this stuff and getting better at
data characterization. How we model and report how we model has been a
request that has been going on for 8-10 years. At these meetings, people
always talk about it. It was a time for us to sit down and say: “You
know what, we have nothing else to do and we only have our computers. We
should dive into this.” It turned out to be productive.
There were four of us working on this project, like individual
development on these modeling programs. But also, the fact that we were
able to create a teaching tutorial workshop that will run at every
conference, and two published papers, that all came from us only having
our computers with us, you know?
Charbonneau:
Did they extend the time for you to get your research done? Did they
make any accommodation?
Abbey:
Yes. One of the projects that ground to a halt was one I got NSF funding
for. We have only gone through one year of that and it was supposed to
be a two-year project in terms of funding. Since then, every year we
have applied for an extension, and until things are going again, like I
said, this summer we are finally getting back to that. It has been over
two years since those problems really started. I do not know what the
limit is on how many times you can ask for a no cost extension, but it
is not that many.
Now it is getting a little bit stressful. Can we finish this up in the
next year? When we will be able to go back into the field? Next summer?
It was not like the postdoc itself did not hinge on that.
The project got funding. It was funding my salary and that research
itself, but I had other projects going, and my postdoc advisor was very
accommodating. We will just keep it. We will just keep paying you until
you start your new job, and you can work on whatever project since we
cannot do this one right now.
Charbonneau:
Do you have any restrictions at all, or can you do all your fieldwork?
Do you have access to all your labs? What are your limitations if you
have any?
Abbey:
Yes, we have started, and we are in week four. Everything is normal in
that all the labs are open, and all the classrooms are open. The only
thing is that all students are required to be vaccinated up to the
allowable booster level, and same with all the faculty and staff. Unless
there is like some like religious reason not to or something. Everybody
has that.
Also, whenever we are in a confined space with a lot of people, say a
small lab with several students or a classroom with students, we are
supposed to wear masks. Otherwise, everything is open and available. We
can do field stuff. We can do lab stuff and all that. We just must wear
masks.
Charbonneau:
Are you teaching any of your classes like remote, blended, hybrid or is
everything in person for all your courses?
Abbey:
All my courses this semester is in person. A few classes in our
department have changed to be forever hybrid when they were in person
before. But I have not been teaching those courses.
Charbonneau:
Do you feel like that shift to the computational work that you started
doing forced change upon your career and research trajectory? Or do you
think it is something you would have discovered on your own?
Abbey:
Yes. It was not like such an epiphany to do that. The community in
general was calling for that type of work. The pandemic made an
opportunity available such that it was the only thing I could do. It was
more like every now and then people talk about it here and there and
then it just like, “OK, well, this is all we can do.”
I think one of the cool things is that I would not have thought to make
multiple projects related to more of the method development along with
that modeling stuff. Now that we had such a successful time creating
that workshop for example, and in doing some of that testing where
people were appreciative of it, I have added more projects that are
specifically related to just bettering the methods.
I would not have done that before. Not thinking of myself as a methods
person. But because it was so successful, it opened it up to be like I
should do more of this. I would not say that it really shifted my career
trajectory or my research trajectory. It just left open this possibility
to continue to add this to my work. I have not changed my focus on
things like tectonics and fault growth processes. I still do that stuff
and that is still my favorite and main thing. But now I also have like
two side projects related to the method stuff so, it is more like that.
I think the other thing that I took advantage of at the time was I had
just been at home with my computer. I knew I was starting this teaching
position and did not have time. Once I was unable to go into the lab, I
took a lot of time to do teaching, workshops, and teaching development.
If I were just finishing my postdoc like normal, I would not have done
those things. I got ahead on many of my teaching ideas in class
development. Even while I was still a postdoc.
But it was like what else was I going to do? I signed up for a lot more
of these workshops that would have been in person, but I was not going
to go to them. But now that they were online, it is like: “Oh, I can do
this.” That changed things a lot because as I did those workshops, I
found out that there is research on education in science education. One
thing that I really jumped into, besides geology research, is more of
geoscience education research, Again, not necessarily something that
would not have happened without the pandemic. It might have still come
up. But it would have come up much more slowly in my life.
I had those months to just learn about education, education research,
and make up stuff for my classes. That is all I was doing. I cannot go
into the lab. I am just working on this modeling project, and I know I
am starting this job. It also accelerated my jump into educational
research.
Charbonneau:
In terms of your future, what are you planning to do for your research
now that things are back to business as usual?
Abbey:
It is difficult to get back into some of those projects that I started
that paused for two years. I was so excited about them at the time that
I started them. It is starting to come back, that excitement, which is
fun. I like having the option to be able to do all of them again and get
data and stuff is making it exciting. The hard part is that I also have
started so many other new projects because those other ones were on
hold. Now I have doubled the number of projects I would normally be
doing.
Charbonneau:
Do you feel like there is more work than you can take on because of the
pandemic? Where do you feel like you are in terms of your workload?
Abbey:
This is an interesting question because you are hitting the nail on the
head with the idea that there is more work that I want to do that I
cannot take on. I would also say that the pandemic really helped me get
good at workload management. I do not get stressed out about having so
much stuff to do that I feel like I need to just work all night. That
does not stress me out. I do not work at all at night or weekends like I
used to.
I do not know how that happened. I honestly have no idea because like I
had heard so many people during the pandemic were just like working
constantly. Because what else can you do? I started so many other
hobbies that are interesting enough and I realized I was able to be
productive enough during regular hours. Even though I do feel sad that I
cannot do all the things all the time, it is more like I feel less
stressed about it. I am just like: “Oh well.” Which is a weird reaction.
I do not think most of my colleagues feel the same way.
There are lots of projects that I am excited about. I want to do work
and I wish that it could go faster, but I do not work more to make it go
faster, because it turns out I found out that it does not work for me.
It is interesting. I would say that I do not feel overwhelmed, and I do
not feel stressed out, but that is it. Not because there are not tons of
stuff to do. There are tons of stuff to do. I just for some reason
decided that that was not something to be worth being stressed about.
Charbonneau:
What changes within the geochronology field do you feel were permanent
from the pandemic? Do you feel like some of these side routes will creep
up that more people will look at, or do you think it is a transitionary
thing?
Abbey:
It will stay because there is this conference, we have every two years
specific to thermochronology. The success that people had with these
side projects or these testing projects where just everybody was so
successful. People were presenting them at this conference, and
everybody was like: “Yes, I want more of this.” This is like as you say
side project, you can still do everything else that you were doing while
adding this other component.
Two big products to get two research projects done rather than like
never report on this testing that we did. If you are mindful about the
choices that you are making and you record every day when you are
getting your data. Then it turns out there is a whole other useful bit
of information that people in the whole community could use. Everybody
wants it based on the feedback from the group. It is going to stay, I
think.
It was just like a fallback during the pandemic and then everybody
realized it was appreciated. Now it is like, wow, that was easy enough.
Let us keep going. I would bet that that kind of stuff keeps going.
Charbonneau:
Do you feel like because of the pandemic there was any significant skill
gap or knowledge loss for you or your students?
Abbey:
Yes, part of my postdoc in that funded project was supposed to do was to
combine one type of thermochronology with another type of geochronology
called cosmogenic nuclide dating. I have used cosmogenic data before,
but I have never collected, processed it, or gone through it step by
step.
I never got to do the process to get to the data and start interpreting
it in a meaningful way. I always just had a collaborator who tells you
what it means. The goal of that funded project was that I would spend a
substantial chunk, two to three months of time, at the actual lab with
my postdoc co-advisor, who was at a different university. They would
teach me all about how that works and how to interpret weird data that
is related to cosmogenics. I was supposed to go there in April of 2020
and to do all that. It ended up being just the same as it has always
been, where I could not go and learn all that stuff.
We still had the rocks processed, and this was by my collaborator. He is
an expert in cosmogenic dating, and he just did all the lab work and did
all the stuff and then sent me the data. I missed that whole learning
component that was supposed to be part of my postdoc, where I would also
become well versed in understanding how to collect and how to interpret
cosmogenic data. I never actually got that, which was the original plan
for that project. I do not think I ever will now that I am here. I do
not know if I could spend 3 months in a lab learning all that stuff
because of teaching. I am not sure I will ever be able to get to that
extremely focused training point again, which is sad.
Charbonneau:
How are you planning to address that issue?
Abbey:
If I wanted to do the whole thing, I think I could get better at it and
learn how to do that stuff, but it will be just through conversations
with this collaborator, and slowly trying to understand it. Something
that I could have really spent intensive time on to get it all in one go
might take me now many years in small conversations rather than a full
jump in and do it all.
Charbonneau:
Have you seen any skill gaps you think are pandemic related within your
students?
Abbey:
It is funny that you said a lot of people were talking about field
stuff, because that is true. I teach a lot of field classes and the
first one I taught when I started here was our Capstone Summer field
class. That is a month of camping and all this stuff. That was summer
2021. It was the point where we were approved to be able to go to the
field in person because it was outside. If students were separated, they
had to sit in our vehicles as we were driving from different spots, we
only had like two or three people per car, and they had to be separated
by a long distance and everybody had to wear masks. But we were in
person.
But because we have two other field classes that they usually do before
going to this capstone, and most of our regular classes also have field
trips throughout them, none of those students had done either the
beginning or intermediate field class or real field trips in their other
classes. It was either no field trips or virtual field trips. At first,
I was like: “Oh my gosh, this is my fault. So, this field class is so
weird.” It is not even science communication. It is just communication
in general.
It was lots of social tension and stuff because people just had not been
with other people for a while. At the time, I was just like: “Oh my
gosh, this is just ridiculous.” It was very much due to the pandemic and
their lack of experience. But since then, increasingly, our classes have
gone back to their normal in person format with field trips.
Now the students have taken all those beginner and intermediate field
courses going to the field and developing those early skills for field
work that it is so noticeable. The class that went out this summer was
easier to work with and you could tell that there was a significant
difference between the two classes. It was all like social stuff, not
necessarily geologic knowledge.
I do not know if this is like a learning or skill gap, but when we were
going online, not very many students asked questions. I was teaching
classes on Zoom. Every now and then somebody would ask a question. Even
if I asked the group if there were questions and waited for an
exceptionally long time to see if they would respond, it was minimal.
Whereas when I started teaching the same exact classes in person, hardly
changing the content and curriculum, it was just night and day. I mean
there were constant questions, comments, and talking. We work together
and that has made an enormous difference. I think not only is it the
field skills and the social skills but like the ability to ask your
peers and work in a team. I do not expect them to work by themselves in
their classes. I expect them to use their resources like their peers who
might know other stuff or have strategies that are different.
Charbonneau:
What is a piece of advice you would give yourself for how to kind of
handle or adapt to the setbacks you encountered because of the pandemic?
Abbey:
March to December of 2020 I almost had an excuse to not be as
productive, because everybody was going through this. As much as it was
fun to do other stuff, like I am going to cook a massive meal that takes
me hours because I am not going to work today. As much as that stuff was
fun, I feel like my advice to myself would be to really use my
scheduling calendar during that time to block out specific time slots.
Time slots were parsed out throughout the day with a class schedule
where it is like, for these two hours you are working on this. I found
that to be helping me a lot right now with all the like extra projects
that I have.
I think I also could have gotten less bored with some of the other
background stuff and been more productive with some of the newer stuff,
if I split things up and made it more required for myself, I would have
had a regimented schedule rather than just sitting around and being
like: “Wow, this really sucks for everyone.”
There was a lot of fatigue in the sense that I was tired of doing so
little so much of the time. If I were distracted by just all the
horrible stuff that was happening, it was extremely easy to stay that
way and just read as many news articles as I could. That was not going
to help me with my situation.
If I were going to go back and say: “Hey, you will have this weird time,
where will you be stuck in your house, and it is going to be emotionally
stressful for so many people, and you will not be able to see any of
your friends or family. But you can still do some other stuff. You do
not lose your job. You can still do things.” What I would tell myself is
to really schedule it out.
For example, I am doing literature stuff for two hours and then I got to
be doing something completely different for the next two hours. Then
something completely different for the next. I think what would have
worked a lot more to be both productive and staying away from getting
too bogged down with all the emotional stuff that was happening. A lot
of people got really depressed during that time and you just hear about
all these sad things happening. You really do not know what is happening
because you are just stuck in one little room or little building. It was
hard to do that. If I could have told myself to be really regimented
with your schedule, then I would not have gotten sucked into some of
that.
Charbonneau:
Is there anything else you want to add to the oral history? Are you OK
with ending it there?
Abbey:
No, we touched on everything. I do not know if it matters now to know
that I personally thought I liked working from home. I have changed now
that we are back. I could be here every day in person in the office, in
the lab.
But I have separated things out to be two days a week I will be at home,
and three to four days a week I will be at school or in the lab. It
really helps, using that time for other stuff because I have all these
extra projects to catch up on. Coming back to normal is now actually
working one or two days a week from home and three or four days a week
from the office. That is my new norm, and some people hate working from
home and some like it. A lot of my colleagues are doing something
similar.
