{"id":24972,"date":"2013-10-15T10:02:26","date_gmt":"2013-10-15T14:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=24972"},"modified":"2013-10-15T10:08:28","modified_gmt":"2013-10-15T14:08:28","slug":"rock-steady-wright-state-geology-student-to-present-at-national-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2013\/10\/15\/rock-steady-wright-state-geology-student-to-present-at-national-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"Rock Steady: Wright State geology student to present at national conference"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Elizabeth Freeman, who plays rugby on a Dayton team in her spare time, believes that some women veer away from geology in part because the field is perceived as a gritty, get-your-hands-dirty career more suited to men.<\/p><\/div>\n

As a young girl, Elizabeth Freeman would carve up creekbeds looking for fossils. While her mother was studying at Wright State University, 7-year-old Elizabeth would visit campus classrooms and offices to look at fossil fish or spend time in the library reading about geology and archaeology.<\/p>\n

In the ensuing years, Freeman continued to inhale geology. She went on nature hikes and digs. She visited science museums. There was a trip to the Everglades and Yellowstone National Park, where she took a peek into the Earth\u2019s interior.<\/p>\n

Today, Freeman is on the verge of realizing her childhood dream\u2014getting a college degree in earth and environmental sciences. And to make it even sweeter, the Wright State senior has been selected to make a presentation at the Geological Society of America\u2019s national conference in Denver.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The number of women in the undergraduate degree programs at Wright State that focus on earth sciences has been increasing in recent years. Overall, 59 percent of the students are men and 41 percent are women.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThere is a place for geology; it\u2019s very applicable,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cI want to see more people\u2014male and female\u2014getting into it. We need to cultivate kids who want to be scientists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freeman\u2019s college career was interrupted when she contracted mononucleosis and was forced to drop out. For the next three years, she worked to save money to finish college and then returned. She credits much of her success to the faculty in the College of Science and Mathematics\u2019 Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was wiser, with more self-confidence and determination that nothing would stand in her way of becoming a geologist,\u201d said her mother, Olivia, who served as a surgeon\u2019s assistant in the U.S. Army.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth, who plays rugby on a Dayton team in her spare time, believes that some women veer away from geology in part because the field is perceived as a gritty, get-your-hands-dirty career more suited to men.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat she is best known for is being that girl who comes to the dig in full makeup and carrying a purse,\u201d said Olivia.\u00a0\u201cShe wants to let people know that you don\u2019t have to be all baggy pants and sweatshirts to be a scientist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another reason some women don\u2019t think of geology as a career choice is because there are few strong role models for them, Elizabeth said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a long, tough road and I made it; and they can make it too,\u201d she said. \u201cYou have to just tell people it\u2019s possible. There are women who I think would be great scientists. Why don\u2019t we celebritize scientists, as they really should be anyway?\u201d<\/p>\n

The number of women in the undergraduate degree programs at Wright State that focus on earth sciences has been increasing in recent years. Overall, 59 percent of the students are men and 41 percent are women.<\/p>\n

Freeman\u2019s geology career got a boost last year when she was volunteering at a geology conference in Charlotte, N.C., and met Mark Leckie, a professor of micropaleontology at the University of Massachusetts. Leckie is a well-known authority on forams, single-celled organisms that as microfossils can accurately give the dates of rocks and reveal a lot about the ocean-climate system. Sensing Freeman\u2019s enthusiasm, Leckie encouraged her to apply for an internship in Amherst to help him with foram research.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was definitely an honor to even be selected for something like that,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cHe was very nurturing in that he saw I had a passion for this and he\u2019s trying to get me to where I want to go. All of his students go on to do something. That\u2019s kind of promising.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the internship, Leckie was helping a colleague who had discovered in Big Water, Utah, the fossilized bones of a pliosaur, a sea serpent-like reptile that lived at the same time as its dinosaur cousins and swam in the great inland sea of what is now the American West. Leckie was using foram data to determine the environment in which the pliosaur lived and handed off the categorizing of core samples to Freeman.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is definitely going to shed some light on the paleo environment, which is really big,\u201d said Freeman.<\/p>\n

As a result, Freeman submitted an abstract that she co-wrote with Leckie for presentation at the GSA\u2019s conference in Denver on Oct. 29. The abstract was accepted, and she will present a poster summarizing their research. Their findings suggest that the pliosaur thrived despite fluctuating oceanographic conditions.<\/p>\n

Leckie said Freeman learned a lot in a short period of time and generated original data that will be presented at the conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was an important step in moving on to grad school and honing her scientific skills and research interests,\u201d Leckie said.<\/p>\n

Freeman\u2019s career goal is to be a research geologist involved in ocean projects. And she has a burning desire to go to Antarctica.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the last frontier, and it\u2019s all scientists down there,\u201d she said. \u201cIt would be so cool to hang out with a bunch of scientists and speak science to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freeman says a friend of hers has a 4-year-old daughter who brings home rocks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Don\u2019t kill that. She obviously has a natural interest in it. You might as well cultivate that,\u2019\u201d Freeman said. \u201cCultivate these kids who want to be scientists. Science and math is where it\u2019s at; if we don\u2019t have that, our country is doomed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a young girl, Elizabeth Freeman would carve up creekbeds looking for fossils. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":24975,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,2066,725,715,746,719],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-earth-environmental-sciences","category-home-news-sidebar","category-news","category-science-mathematics","category-special-categories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24972"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24984,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24972\/revisions\/24984"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}