Alexander Glass, Ph.D.
Senior Lecturer in Geology and Climate
Division of Earth and Climate Sciences
Nicholas School of the Environment
Duke University
E-mail: alex.glass@duke.edu
Phone (Work): 919-681-6167 ( I don’t ever use this or check messages)
Office Hours: I will hold office hours every Tu and Th for two hours over Zoom. Zoom link will be provided through Canvas Announcements. Times will vary but will be announced (this is to support students across different time zones).
Short Biography
I was born in and spent my childhood in Hildesheim, Germany before moving to Wheaton, Illinois in 1989. After trying out pre-med, biology, anthropology, and chemistry as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign I took my first geology class. I immediately fell in love with the science that allows its practitioners to have a career that combines outdoor fieldwork, domestic and international travel, state-of-the-art laboratory analysis, and both fundamental knowledge and applied-solution research. After a two year Masters at The Ohio State University, and another five years at U of I, I got my Ph.D. in geology with a focus in invertebrate paleontology. My research focuses almost entirely on the Paleozoic (541-252 million years ago) fossil record of brittle stars. During my first job, a two year stint at Central Washington University, WA, I met my geologically- and botanically-inclined partner Jen. After moving to NC and Duke University in 2007, we got married on Precambrian gneisses along the NC Blue Ridge Parkway. Our son, Adam (28) lives in WA, and Kyle (25), lives in Canada.
I am unapologetically in love with rocks, the natural world, and living things. I am deeply convicted and motivated by my belief that ALL knowledge (be it in the natural sciences, humanities, arts, social sciences, religion, etc.) is essential and meaningful. Knowledge-gaining must first and foremost serve to enrich and deepen our individual and collective lives, and widen our understanding of reality beyond our limited individual horizons. Applications and solutions that come out of newly-gained knowledge are of course important and greatly needed. Nevertheless, I believe that an exclusive, narrow focus (particularly by academia) on only “solution-based inquiry” entraps us in our immediate, narrow present-day experience, stifles creativity, free inquiry, and limits the search for solutions to existing, well-worn, and much travelled paths. I hope my teaching will reflect this conviction.
I love hiking, camping, gardening, carpentry, and playing board games. I am an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy, genres I consider Literature with a capital “L”. If Frank Herbert’s Dune Series were a religion, I would be a devoted believer. I enjoy and collect German audio dramas (aka “Hörspiele”), and consider paper-modelling a form of meditation. I am also an avid player of retro-computer games, and can be found letting off steam on my XBoxOne (most recently wrestling with the concept of “Nothing is true, everything is permitted“). I am obsessed with all things geology, paleontology, evolution, biology, and zoology. I have been a lifelong “fringewatcher”, being deeply involved in the public science and religion, and creation-evolution discussion. Lately, I have also been dragged into the climate change and seal level rise denier debate.
My family lives on 1.1 acres of deciduous woodland in Efland, NC with four cats (Lucian, Loki, Mina, and Finan), two turtles (Logan, Olivia), a bearded dragon (Nurmi), three 17-year-old hermit crabs, and six chickens.
————————————————————————————————
Recent Comments