Students shuffle into the lecture hall, making themselves known with the clash of metal water bottles and clacking of laptop keys. Futuristic-looking 3D octagons hang from the ceiling juxtaposing the walls consumed by old Hollywood red curtains. As the clock strikes 12:05 p.m., Andrea Dutton does not skip a beat and begins her Geology 100 class. On the last day before finals, it is all about climate change.
Dutton, the Helen Jupnik Endowed Research Professor of Geoscience, focuses her work on reconstructing past sea levels to share more about future sea level rise — so this lecture is right in her wheelhouse. Her keen knowledge of climate change and ability to communicate science in a digestible way make her a powerhouse in the geoscience community and a leading voice sounding alarms about the possible impacts of rising waters.
“I’m like a CSI [crime scene investigator] of planet Earth, and it’s a crime scene where I have to put together the pieces of the puzzle,” says Dutton. “That’s what first drew me into being a geologist.”
After dropping a linear algebra class in college, Dutton’s journey has been anything but that — linear. Originally, she pursued a degree in chemistry with hopes of attending medical school. But she needed to fill that dropped class, and her friends suggested an intro to geology class. Dutton found herself fascinated by the material and realized she had discovered her passion.
“I was going to be pre-med when I was an undergrad. I took biology, chemistry and physics,” says Dutton. “Then I realized I could use all those things to study the Earth.”
But it became too late to switch majors. Her jumble of classes left her graduating with a major in music, her pre-med classes and a handful of geology classes.
Before returning to graduate school for geology, she taught as a private school teacher in bustling New York City. As a science teacher for students ranging from third graders to seniors in high school, the levels of material varied.
“I feel like that really helped me as a science communicator,” says Dutton. “I learned how to pitch at all those different levels and how to switch on a dime. [I would] walk from a sixth-grade classroom into AP chemistry and back again. I think that was invaluable training in hindsight for what I do.”
In graduate school, she focused on reconstructing past temperatures, seasonality and climate in Antarctica. After finishing her PhD, she found her niche — sea level rise reconstruction. The opportunity to research this arose, and Dutton latched on.
Dutton’s research uses fossil corals to pinpoint past sea levels. Hundreds of years ago, they were significantly higher than today, and corals need to sit near the surface to survive. Now, these coral formations are outside of the ocean’s bounds and on land. Dutton’s fieldwork produces data that tracks their position through time, showing us how high the oceans were before — and how high they might be again.
She collaborates with modelers and reef paleobiologists to help figure out exactly what the water depth was over the coral. Other times she works with geophysicists who model the redistribution of water around the world after ice sheets melted. Climate and ice sheet modelers also use her fieldwork data to help tune their models.
Dutton also brings a different perspective to the table.
“I’m a geochemist, but I’m also a field geologist, so it’s very interdisciplinary. I have my background with going to a liberal arts school and taking everything from music to all these different sciences,” says Dutton. “That has kind of been the hallmark of my science.”
This research has taken her to remarkable places like the Seychelles, a group of islands in the Indian Ocean, filled with breathtaking beaches and coral reefs — one of her personal favorites. And to the U.S. Capitol, where, earlier this year, she testified in front of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee hearing focused on the warming of the oceans and the impact it would have on the U.S. marine economy.
Dutton’s journey has truly come full circle, as she is back to teaching now as a professor, first at the University of Florida and now at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
When lecturing to college students or giving TED Talks to thousands of people, Dutton puts human lives at the center of climate change rather than the Earth itself. She finds that people often frame the discussion as human beings needing to save the planet. But the Earth has survived billions of years and will probably also survive harmful human activities, according to Dutton. She believes people, especially her students, need to see its direct impact on their lives.
“I give them concrete examples of how [climate change] impacts their lives,” says Dutton. “If you just say ‘let’s save the planet’ or ‘save the polar bears’ it feels distant, not relevant. It doesn’t feel urgent, which it should.”
Dutton dedicates much of her time to outreach and communicating science. That is not necessarily her job or what she is paid to do, but she feels a moral obligation to step into this role as a science communicator. Dutton looks to support the Wisconsin Idea of educating people to make a difference beyond the classroom, so they have the tools to go out and make a difference.
And Dutton has done just that, by educating the next generation of journalists, teachers and business leaders about climate change. Although they may not be pursuing a degree in geology, you never know when one student might be sitting in an intro to geology class and become captivated by the complexities of Earth’s systems. After all, Dutton was once one of those students.
“I have always followed my passions, and that has made such a difference to where I am now,” says Dutton. “I think that is the secret to being successful.”