Broadly, my area of expertise and interest includes the factors that make our global environment as it is today, and processes that cause larger scale environmental change. So, in Teaching, my responsibilities include Oceanography (GEOL 104), Life and Environments Through Time (GEOL 320), Environmental Change (GEOL 488) as well as more specialized graduate level offerings in biogeochemistry and micropaleontology.

In Research, my students and I focus on the physical and biological processes that led to global change over the past several hundred thousand years (the Late Pleistocene to the Present). We have particularly concentrated on the tropical oceans of the Pacific and Atlantic. But we have also examined human impacts on watersheds of Northern Illinois.

In Service, I have been involved with local environmental issues ranging from remediation of the water supply in DeKalb to management of Park District natural areas. I have also served with a variety of national and international professional organizations concerned with the funding of Environmental Sciences as well as publications and development of the profession.