Oxy's inaugural Gibby Professor of Science may be exiting the classroom, but there are still mountains to climb—as well as prepping her data (and her extensive rock collection) for future generations of geologists
As a student at UC Santa Cruz, Margi Rusmore was the youngest member of the first American Women’s Himalayan Expedition, which climbed the 10th-highest mountain in the world in November 1978. “There was a lot of buzz” around the expedition, Rusmore recalls—a New York Times headline read, Himalayan Scaling Called an Inspiration to Women—“and I realized early on that I don't take well to talking about myself. Some people are good at it—I'm not.”
Despite her aversion to attention, Rusmore sat down with Occidental magazine recently to reflect on her 40 years at the College—a boom time for geology marked by the completion of the Hameetman Science Center in 2003, the creation of the California Environmental Semester (“best thing ever,” she says), and a marked increase in the number of women Ph.D.s nationwide—a number of whom have come through Rusmore's classroom.
She's still motivated by the same thing that's always motivated her—“I’m just curious”—as well as a sense of duty on the part of senior scientists “to make sure that the data are available for the next generation.”
“I don’t think there’s any place else like Occidental,” Rusmore adds (a full interview will be posted shortly). “The combination that made it such a good place for me was the passion about the mission, the teaching, and the academic scholarship that keeps everybody’s minds humming here—and I think part of that is being in L.A. There’s a hive mind hum in Los Angeles that I think we tap into here in some ways. I may have found as much happiness or satisfaction at a different place, but I just can’t really imagine it.”
Erin Campbell ’92: The helicopter had flown for an hour over ice fields pierced by bony mountain peaks, with no sign of human habitation. When it landed, the helicopter deposited Margi Rusmore and me with a small mound of gear and flew away, not to return for weeks. This was my first trip anywhere as remote as the Canadian Coast Mountains, and I began to question the wisdom of this job as Margi’s field assistant. But Margi took one look at me, got out the camp stove, and made us tea. Then everything was all right.
Margi’s leadership in the field, the office, and the classroom was inspirational. There seemed to be nothing she could not do. At age 20, she was a world-class mountaineer, having participated in the first U.S. ascent and first all-women’s ascent of Annapurna in the Himalayas as the youngest member of the team. Throughout her life, Margi has carried a strong air of confidence and capability that is communicated to her students.
Dr. Rusmore set an example for students of perseverance and dedication, but at the same time joy and enthusiasm both at work and in her personal life. In academics, it can be difficult to find a mentor who has both a successful career and family life, but Margi showed that it can be done and done well.
In addition to her excellent teaching and mentorship, Margi has a strong international reputation for the large body of work she has contributed in the earth sciences. She is a widely recognized expert in structural geology in British Columbia, and has been for decades. One night while we were doing fieldwork in the Coast Mountains, we turned on the radio for entertainment. Sometimes we might hear a logging camp in the area ordering groceries. This night members of the Canadian Geological Survey were on the radio, puzzling over a geologic question. Margi broke into the conversation and introduced herself, and the Canadian geologists were thrilled; the expert was there to answer their questions in the field.
Dr. Rusmore has motivated and guided hundreds if not thousands of students, but I can truly say that she illuminated the path that I have followed. She set a strong example of fearlessness, enthusiasm, commitment, and delight in geology and beyond, and for that I am forever grateful.
A geology major at Occidental (with a minor in mathematics), Campbell has served as Wyoming state geologist and director of the Wyoming State Geological Survey since 2017. She has a Ph.D. in geology from the University of Wyoming, where she specialized in structural geology with a secondary emphasis in geophysics.
Annika Dechert ’19: On my first day of classes at Occidental, I walked into Hameetman Science Center, Room 105, and was greeted by a chipper yet down-to-business geology professor who immediately jumped into the syllabus and our first lecture. Professor Margi Rusmore made her high expectations clear as we dove into plate tectonics, and I quickly realized that the joke that geologists only like to play with (and lick) rocks was vastly incorrect.
When I had difficulty understanding an early lab, I went to office hours for help. After a few minutes of discussing the assignment, Professor Rusmore asked me a simple yet profound question: “How are you doing?” She was the first person on campus to check in on me, an 18-year-old girl who had just moved to Los Angeles from small-town Wyoming. During this conversation, she offered to be my academic adviser until I declared a major, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that I had already found both my major and the perfect adviser.
The following semester, I officially declared a geology major and bought my first hiking boots. Margi declared that I could no longer call her Professor Rusmore; she also offered me an on-campus research position and opened a door for my future. Her curiosity, deep questions, and tenacity formed my foundation in geology.
Even after graduation, Margi has continued her mentorship, showcasing her dedication to her students. Not only has she offered expertise, such as helping me navigate the tricky water of being the only woman on fieldwork camping trips, but she is also the first person to cheer me on throughout my career and personal life. Margi has set the gold standard of mentorship, passing on her enthusiasm, perseverance, and curiosity. I am forever grateful for her guidance and friendship.
A geology/Earth science major at Oxy, Dechert completed her Ph.D. at the University of Oregon in the Department of Earth Science in June. She is currently a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley, working with Assistant Professor Penny Wieser on magma storage conditions of silicic Cascades Volcanoes.
Kirsten Menking ’90: I went to Occidental with the intention of majoring in either psychology or geology. I took an introductory geology class my freshman year and never thought about psychology as a major again. The lab was taught by a dynamic young professor, Margi Rusmore, who was only 29 at the time.
As a budding young female scientist, I was instantly hooked by Margi, whose labs opened my eyes to the world around me, to the millions of years of history encoded in the spectacular rock formations around the L.A. Basin, history that she taught me to read through careful examination of the minerals and structures they contained. As I went on to take her courses in introductory field mapping, structural geology, and advanced field mapping, she introduced me to geological fieldwork, and as someone who thoroughly enjoyed camping and being out in nature but who had grown up in the flatlands of Kansas, I was thrilled by the realization that I could have a career in which I got to hike in the mountains for a living! What could be better than that?
Sometime in my sophomore year, Margi received a grant to fund her research in British Columbia. She invited me to work with her that summer, which turned out to be utterly life-changing. Since I didn’t have much experience mountaineering, she enrolled me in the Sierra Club’s Basic Mountaineering Training Course where I learned how to use crampons and an ice axe to navigate icy slopes and how to use ropes for safety.
At the start of the summer, we drove up I-5 with five weeks’ worth of food packed into what, we hoped, were bear-proof metal canisters and set out on an incredible adventure as we were helicoptered into our first field site, a glacier high above tree line in the Coast Mountains. We would spend the next several weeks taking samples and mapping the bedrock to unravel the geologic history of the area, which is a story of multiple volcanic mountain chains slamming into North America hundreds of millions of years ago, and we were surrounded by some of the most spectacular scenery I have ever seen, with glaciers descending in towering ice falls between sharp spines of rock.
While I learned how to walk on ice and scree in some of the highest mountains (upwards of 13,000 feet) I had yet encountered, Margi gradually revealed to me that she had been the youngest member of an all-women’s expedition to Annapurna (26,545 feet) in the Himalayas while a college student like myself! I was in total awe and just wanted to be her.
I jumped at the chance to work with her again the next summer, this time for seven weeks. In addition to the geological knowledge and skills I learned from her, my time with Margi also imparted important non-academic skills in wilderness survival, like how to determine how much food a person needs to remain happy and healthy while climbing mountains all day, how to manage fear and discomfort (we had a near-miss with a grizzly bear and my tent blew away, leaving me to sleep in a rain-soaked sleeping bag until the helicopter pilot could fetch us and take us to warmth), and how to maintain a cheerful attitude (or at least try) during times of adversity (we had to go on half-rations at times when rain and clouds prevented the pilot from bringing us new food stocks).
By the end of my time at Oxy, I was completely certain that I wanted to go on to an academic career. Margi assisted me in this quest as well by suggesting that I reach out to a friend of hers from graduate school who had recently started teaching at UC Santa Cruz. He went on to become my Ph.D. adviser, and the rest is history.
While my serious mountaineering days are long over, I still look to Margi’s example as I work with my own students in the classroom at Vassar College, my academic home for 28 years now. Her academic rigor, fairness, fantastic organization, and sense of humor are all things I’ve strived to emulate, and I know that I speak for so many students when I say that she played a pivotal role in shaping the person who I am today. I wish her all the best for an active, enjoyable, and well-deserved retirement!
A geology major at Oxy, Menking is Professor of Earth Science on the Althea Ward Clark Chair and Chair of the Department of Earth Science and Geography at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
