My career includes nine years as geologist for the State of Wisconsin and Professor of Geology & Environmental Science at Wheaton College in IL since 1986. My association with Pi Kapp brothers at WCU and FSU covered some of the best times of my life. The social-relational environment set the background for my desire to work with college students in “fixing a broken world.”
Over the last two decades, I have mentored over forty students in research-service projects all over the globe. Wheaton is a non-denominational Christian school with a great tradition of reaching out in efforts to improve the lives of people and the rest of Creation. Some of the projects include conducting community-development surveys in Kosovo and the Republic of South Africa; establishing partnerships with a small university in northern Haiti; teaching international ministry workers (in Holland, Hawaii, and Tanzania) about the environment; and counseling organizations that support indigenous miners in East Africa.
My latest initiative is supervising interdisciplinary undergraduates in a program to ultimately bring simple, natural waste-water treatment systems to needy villages. Many of the student-oriented projects have resulted in professional presentations at conferences and publications in important journals.