Interview: Professor Mike Valentine

BY SAGE MATKIN

Professor Mike Valentine is a current geology professor at the University of Puget Sound. Valentine specializes in paleomagnetic studies, specifically in looking at the movement of the crust and geologic mapping. Mike has been teaching here for over 32 years! Aside from teaching, Mike is a baseball and music fan.

Professor Valentine or, as students know him, Mike is sitting in his crowded office at the end of the geology department hall. It’s the Friday before Thanksgiving Break and students are ready for vacation. Those who care—students, professors, and faculty—are speaking about the future of the University of Puget Sound, with the recent financial blow and a low enrollment rate having corrosive consequences on the small departments at the university. Geology, unfortunately, is in line for a strike and a dip it seems. I sit with Mike, who has been teaching here for over 32 years and talk about his years prior and during his time at the university.

We start at the very beginning and I ask him what got him into geology. As a kid growing up in Buffalo, New York, Mike was interested in all sci- ences, and had “chemistry sets, telescopes, and an observatory in a friend’s attic”. As he grew older and considered a future in science, he attended SUNY at Albany when the choice came. “When I got to college, I was looking at biology, geology, and astronomy,” Mike says, “with biology, I looked at the 300-400 people lectures, and that didn’t appeal to me particularly.” So, he decided, “with geology, I could do research, teach, or industry jobs—oil and minerals. I took some geology courses right away and decided I really liked it.” Professor Valentine went on to graduate from Albany and go on to do his masters and doctorate program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He graduated with an M.S with his thesis: Structure and tectonics of the southern Gebel Duwi Area, Eastern Desert of Egypt, and later with a Ph.D. with his dissertation Cenozoic tectonic rotation of the Mojave Desert, California as indicated by paleomagnetic studies. Between his undergraduate and graduate years, Mike took some time off to work at a pharmaceutical company. “Really geology-focused” he laughs while telling me about his time at the company doing lab technician work. Mike didn’t suffer during his time off school based on his story about a paid work trip to Barbados, where he tested sunscreens.

Dreaming of the Barbados’ sun and the Atlantic Ocean, Mike went on to complete his master’s and Ph.D., each degree bringing him to a new place—as known from his thesis/dissertation titles. During graduate school, Mike spent three months in a city along the Red Sea, mapping out the geological structures—like faults and folds. During his time there, Mike was not your typical tourist. “I certainly never would’ve gone to that part of Egypt; it wasn’t exactly a tourist area. In fact, they were closed to outsiders until a year or so before I got there”, Mike explains, “there were actually places in the past that were mined so we were told ‘don’t go inside those areas, they’re fenced off because you know, you might blow up.’” Hoping to never feel how calcite does when exposed to hydrochloric acid, Mike went easy on the off-roading and favored visiting the sites, such as the Valley of the Kings and the Pyramids of Giza. For his next journey (and degree), Mike spent several field seasons in the Mojave Desert. He collected rock samples for his paleomagnetic studies and recalls his time as “interesting to see the place and just be out in the desert, marching around drilling holes in rocks.” For his next expedition, Mike went on to fill the Professor Valentine role at a few universities before settling at Puget Sound in 1994. “There was a job advertised here, I had never heard of this school before the advert. It was for a one-year position” he responds when I ask about his beginnings at Puget Sound. “At the end of the first year, when I would have been looking for another job and going elsewhere, they created Science in Context. It was supposed to show that science wasn’t just an intellectual pursuit, but it has practical uses and intersects with society. I got involved in developing one of those courses, along with [a retired professor] who was teaching here at the time. And we developed one of the first Science in Context courses, so they kept me another year. I apparently did a decent job my first year, so they decided to keep me another year. I was here for a total of 3 years on a temporary basis.” When the university offered Professor Valentine a tenure track position, he couldn’t resist: “I became the fifth member of the geology department at that point...So, here I am 32 years later.” Now, Mike teaches geology and oceanography classes and is an academic advisor to students. As a long-time professor at our university, Mike is bound to have a favorite class, which is exactly what I asked him. “My favorite class is actually Geology 101. You are talking to people who generally don’t know much about geology, it’s their first exposure to it. The rewarding part of it is to see them gain interest. You see them go ‘rocks...boring’ and then a certain percentage, at least, go ‘oh this is pretty cool,’” he laughs. “Every time I teach it, even though I am teaching this introductory level [class], I learn something new, either from reading it over or from students asking questions.” As both an advisor and professor, Mike observes the ins and outs of the geology department. “Very few people come here saying that they want to be a geologist. When we get our advisees every year, maybe three or four out of 16 say ‘maybe I want to do something with geology.’ So, a lot of our recruits come from taking Geology 101 as a science elective to making it their major.” soon started traveling with students, imparting his knowledge and exploring new places: “I had worked on a project with [a former student] on a little island in the Atlantic Ocean, Ascension Island...Like a real desert island.” Mike traveled with grant money he was awarded by the Natural Science Foundation, “to do some work there with paleomagnetism to look at rocks of various ages—up to a million and a half years old—and use that magnetic signal in them to track how the magnetic field had changed over that period of time.” After collecting rock samples from the area, Mike and his fellow researchers “would slice them into little pieces and look at the magnetic minerals in them to see what was causing the magnetism...It was all volcanic, so it was great for paleomagnetic samples.” Mike, to no one’s surprise, inspired this student to go on to be a geologist and he is currently teaching at a school in Michigan, “He’s teaching geology and he’s basically a paleontologist. He didn’t turn into a “paleomagner” like me.”

After teaching classes for 32 years, Mike could teach with his eyes closed. But he doesn’t tire of the material; “The thing that strikes me every year when I teach Geology 101 is I ask, “What’s geology?” And they go, “rock”. Yeah, rocks are important of course, but I think it’s about understanding how the Earth works and how it produces rocks, mountains, and Grand Canyons. So, it’s so much more than rocks.” Mike explains further, “[geology] is a creative endeavor too. Scientists, in general, make stuff up all the time, but they make stuff up based on their observations and they test them. It’s not like a painting, where I can decide if it’s abstract or realistic, or like a short story, where you can put stuff in that didn’t actually happen. But we are making up stuff all the time to explain what you are seeing all around you. That’s the way science works. I think that is kind of a revelation for people to understand, it’s not just memorizing a lot of chemicals or rocks or formulas.”

Mike’s travel bug didn’t stay away for long. He

Professor Valentine continued traveling with students: “I got to go to Alaska with my students in 2007. It was cold and rainy the whole time, even though we went during the summer months. It was miserable that way, but it was beautiful. Everywhere looked like a postcard.” Mike studied the paleomagnetism of the area, “We were looking to find out the movement of the crust. One student was looking at fossils that would indicate that this place was originally in a lower latitude.” Mike didn’t have much luck on this trip, he explains: “Unfortunately, the rocks were highly altered, so their magnetism was messed up. It didn’t work out very well; I got some suggestions, but not very much evidence.” Mike accepted his research’s lower-than-expected evidence (as is done in field research) and admired Alaska for its scenery on his plane ride home.

We now reach the point in the interview where my questions turn from those of a biographer to those of a curious student. If you have ever taken a class with Professor Valentine, you know his professorial quirks: writing semi-legible lectures on the blackboard, wearing an insanely cool t-shirt daily, making music references that would better suit our parents, wheeling out a projector that’s older than his current students and being just an overall kind and funny man.

To most fashion observers, Mike’s t-shirt collection is legendary. Responding to my question about his fashion choices, Mike says “I like funky t-shirts. I don’t know exact numbers, but I have enough t-shirts that I have one for every day of a semester. But I have more than that really; I have a double dresser full of t-shirts and some extras that are still in the basement that I need to break out—some oldies.” Mike has collected shirts from every orientation, Mariners’ opening day, vacations, and some locally sourced from his friend’s silk-screening business. “I have kind of slowed down lately because I have too many t-shirts. T-shirt hoarder” he laughs. Nothing can beat a good t-shirt in Mike’s eyes.

When Mike is not talking geology, he’s probably talking music. During one Geology 101 lab, my lab partner (Hi Charlie) and I were fiending for some music and Mike, being the guy he is, allowed us to play some, on the condition that it was “good music”. The next thing we hear is Mike singing along to Beast of Burden while walking around the lab room. It seems his thoughts on the latest decline in geology majors and about the fate of the geology department. He sighs, “Not a fun question at all. I mean, my thoughts on that are: I am sorry to see [the decline] happening here. We were actually expanding in our graduates, prior to COVID. Now, with the uncertainty of the future of the geology department, we don’t recruit geology majors anymore. In fact, we tell them that they really can’t be geology majors. Because we are just uncertain what’s going to happen. geology has actually been removed from the literature that goes out to recruit students. Geology, on the web page, is no longer listed as a potential major.” Our mutual sadness has taken over the room and Mike continues: “The geology department has been around for some 80 years and I’m sorry to see it go.” like Mike can’t get enough of anything rock related. So, I asked him about his music taste. “I am a classic rock guy. Growing up, I listened to The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Beach Boys and all that stuff from the 60s. And before that, in the late 50s, my mom and dad would listen to people like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. I even liked that stuff and listened. But mostly [my taste] is pre-2000s. I’m a vast storer, or have been, of trivia so I can hear a song from 40 years ago and tell you who sang it. But, recent stuff, it’s like “Taylor Swift? Snoop Dogg?” I am surprised now how many students are still aware of [old music], like The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix. Your parents taught you well”. Mike went on to tell me about his rock lessons with his children: “When my kids were little, I would make them listen to the classic rock radio in the car and test them. I’d ask them “Who’s that?”, they would go “Uh, The Beatles?”, I’d go “No, WHO is that?”, then they’d say, “Oh, The Who”. I still like to test them when they ride with me.”

I save the hardest question for last, with the fate of geology suffering a hard blow. I ask Professor Valentine, who has been teaching here for 32 years,

To lighten the mood, I asked Mike if he had anything to say to his fans. He sounded shocked, “Who are you? People idolize me? I don’t know. I don’t know if I have fans.” I reassure him of his very existent fanbase, and he goes on, “I know some people appreciate my teaching and I like to get to know people. I try to be more than a person transferring knowledge to students. I think people who enjoy my class and like what I do, I appreciate that. That is the thing that really makes this job great for me. When we were online and I was just talking to my laptop, there was nothing fun about it. The fun part is getting to interact with people, and I love answering questions, whether it be about geology or stuff like this [interview]. If people enjoy that, I am just happy I can do that. That is my motivation.”

I clear my throat and end the recording. I thank Mike for his time and for agreeing to sit and share his experiences with me. I walk out of his office and into the geology hall, thinking about the composition of this interview. Professor Valentine inspired geologists for 32 years, each going out into the world with his imparted knowledge and advice in their heads. I am lucky to be a part of his aforementioned fan base and I know others are too.