My name is Christina Symons and I am one of the geologists working on the ERESE Project (Enduring Resources for Earth Science Education, http://www.Earthref.org/ERESE). ERESE provides a digital collection rich with state of the art earth science data and images for the classroom, bringing students and teachers onboard virtual cruises and into the field. Anthony Koppers and I look forward to sharing some of our collection and one of the more controversial, hot topics that we, as marine geologists and geophysicists, investigate during our seminar “Hotspots, Plumes and LIPs: Everything’s Coming Up Igneous!”.

As you may learn during our presentation, growing up in Spring, TX, didn’t present many opportunities for much in the way of igneous rocks…nonetheless, I was always one of those “why” kids. Why is the sky blue? Why is that river flowing east and not west? Why is that rock shiny and this one so dull? Thanks to my parents who always encouraged and exemplified this inquisitive nature I grew to love science and appreciate the need for it in our everyday lives. As an undergraduate (Stanford University, BS 1993) I managed to take a broad sampling of general science classes – physics, chemistry, math – to keep my options open for a major. Declaring geology my junior year was a no-brainer after a fantastic introductory course. That decision opened more doors to adventure than I would have thought possible.

For the next two years of college I spent some weekdays and many weekends mapping along the Pacific coast, in the Sierra Nevada and in California’s Central Valley. My “classroom” was the great outdoors. Every day I was exploring how the earth works, its processes and history, and why it appears as it does today. (And how it may change tomorrow!)

As a graduate student my classroom was the deep, blue sea (University of Texas, MS, 1996; Scripps Institution of Oceanography, PhD, 2002). My first year in Austin I ended up onboard an Australian research vessel for 6 weeks in the Southern Ocean south of New Zealand. I began studying the Pacific-Australian plate boundary, a strike-slip boundary very similar to the San Andreas fault, but kilometers undersea. What an experience!!!! In San Diego, as if the view from my office a stone’s throw from the beach wasn’t good enough, I spent nearly 200 days at sea (and some below sea). I investigated how plates bend and break at subduction zones, skimmed the surface of a submerged guyot in Alvin, and dove in the Navy’s rescue submarines and operated unmanned vehicles off the coast of San Diego testing their worthiness as research instruments.

As my original “why” questions have evolved one thing has remained – my appreciation for the Earth and how humans affect her natural processes. We hope you enjoy learning a little bit about how the Earth works tonight. We certainly have!