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Boston’s Topography Was Shaped By Glaciers More Than 20,000 Years Ago

Our guest this episode, Sally Jamrog (BUA’23), tells us about her favorite BU class, EE 105: Crises of Planet Earth

You can also find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

The classes we take can change our perspectives and shape our lives—and we think that’s worth celebrating. Our new podcast, Today I Learned, is all about the classes at BU that have had a real effect on students in our community; we want to know all about the classroom environment, professor, subject matter, and the cool facts that make a lasting impression.

Sally Jamrog (BUA’23) spent most of her high school career immersed in the humanities. The recent graduate, who will be headed off to Bryn Mawr College in the fall, loves the arts, literature, and history. Ever since taking EE 105: Crises of Planet Earth, she’s added a new subject to that list: rocks.

Through the enthusiastic and engaging teaching style of James Lawford Anderson, a professor and director of undergraduate studies at the College of Arts and Sciences, geology has come alive for Jamrog, and she’s not alone. The course, she notes, is extremely popular among other BUA students, which she credits to Lawford Anderson’s ability to bring color and liveliness to the classroom. The class focuses on how manmade and natural events (or crises) can shape the environment and leave a geological record. Climate change, as well as the effect of natural disasters on different populations, are frequent topics, which Jamrog says made her and her classmates feel a sense of timeliness and urgency. Does she still want to pursue a humanities-heavy course of study in college? Most definitely. But, she notes, Bryn Mawr has “a really good archaeology program, too.”

This concludes Season One of Today I Learned–thanks for learning with us.

Takeaways

• There are a number of interdisciplinary connections between cultural history and geological history, which can be seen in archaeological sites like Pompeii; recovered artifacts shine a light on both how people lived and how their environment influenced it.
• Love to visit Jamaica Pond or the Boston Harbor Islands? Thank a glacier–before it’s too late!
• It might be disheartening to hear how the human impact on the environment makes natural disasters worse, so it helps if the subject is taught by someone with an engaging and empowering aura in the classroom.

Transcript

Sophie Yarin: Hello everyone, and welcome to Today I Learned, a BU Today podcast where we explore fun facts and ideas across a variety of academic disciplines by interviewing students about the things they learn in their favorite classes at BU. A single class can have a transformative impact, whether you’re changing majors, picking your career path, or just looking to expand your horizons. I’m your host, Sophie Yarin, and I’m investigating how the things we learn in the classroom affect our lives. And so to do that, we are going to be speaking directly to BU students, which is why we have Sally Jamrog in the studio. Sally, thank you so much for joining us. 

Sally Jamrog: Thanks so much. 

Yarin: So Sally, you are our first BU Academy student, which we’re super excited about. And you’ve brought the class Earth and Environment 10: Crises of Planet Earth to the show today. So is that a BUA class, or is that a CAS class? 

Jamrog: It’s a CAS class.

Yarin: Okay, got it. And so what does the class cover? I mean, the name of the course is very affecting: Crises of Planet Earth. It could mean so many things. 

Jamrog: Yeah, it definitely covers a broad range of disciplines. We start the first half of the course exploring natural disasters and ways the Earth affects us as human beings, and then the second half, the latter half of the course, covers manmade disasters and how we affect the Earth. And it’s an intro-level course, so there’s a lot of memorization involved and basic conversation about a lot of different topics. So there’s not a lot of roots of the class in very discrete chemistry disciplines, or mathematic disciplines. But we do touch on those and how those help us understand the Earth, and really how they work and the Earth works as a whole. So it’s a very interdisciplinary class in that way, in that we’re discussing processes and history, but also a little bit of chemistry and science. 

Yarin: I see. So it’s like the chicken-or-the-egg question you’re looking at the crisis first and then the underpinning science. 

Jamrog: Yeah. 

Yarin: Got it, okay. So I wanted to get that out of the way before asking you to share a fun fact you learned in class with us.

Jamrog: Yeah, absolutely. Did you know that a lot of the New England- and Boston-area topography was created by glaciers? So there’s lots of hills and little lakes called kettles and drumlins, which is what the hills are called—the Boston Harbor Islands are drumlins—that were created as rocky terrain that the glacier receded over. And kettles are where water has pooled in a little basin that was created by the ice. 

Yarin: Okay, so I had always heard that Walden Pond is a kettle pond. Does that mean—

Jamrog: Oh, absolutely, yeah. And Jamaica Pond is a kettle.

Yarin: That’s close to here, where we’re recording.

Jamrog: Exactly.

Yarin: That’s very cool. So to paraphrase: This class is looking at two categories of crises: man-made hazards and natural hazards. So can you tell me what the fundamental differences are in how those manifest and also in how we address them? 

Jamrog: Absolutely. I mean, it’s pretty apparent in the title, but I think the differences between them have gotten a little more fraught and complicated over the last 100 years and in recent years, and going into the future with climate change and how [the climate is] changing around us. But man-made hazards are hazards that are perpetuated by humanity and caused by actions and choices that we make in society, about the Earth, regarding resources. Natural hazards are hazards that result from the natural mechanics of the Earth. So like earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, other things like that. But I think how those manifest has really changed over the last few years and that human-made, human disasters are starting more and more to affect the patterns of natural disasters like hurricanes, because the Earth’s climate is warming in certain places and also cooling in other places. And basically, the introduction of fossil fuels, and the penetration of the ozone making the climate change of the planet just all over the place; makes hurricanes and other atmospheric storms more intense and stronger. So that’s just one example of a man-made, human choice: fossil fuels in the atmosphere affecting a lot of the natural mechanics of the Earth. 

Yarin: So we’re sort of seeing a blurring of the lines, almost.

Jamrog: Exactly. 

Yarin: So in the submission that you sent us, when we were asking folks about their favorite classes, you mentioned that you’re very interested in the humanities, but this class has opened your eyes to earth science. And I wanted to know how Dr. Anderson, the professor of this course, how his approach and teaching method has influenced that. 

Jamrog: I mean, as soon as I stepped into his classroom, he’s just such a gregarious and charismatic person. And he’s just so funky in a lot of ways. He has so many stories, and he’s so excited about rocks, and also seemingly insignificant things or things that we’re just not really interested in—we sort of take for granted how the Earth works and the materials that we have around us, like simple rocks on Comm Avenue, and he just seems to see life and stories in all of that. And that just really got me excited in the way that a lot of humanities get me excited, because I’m very much a humanities person. But I think getting excited about environmental science in the way that he has really encouraged my desire to pursue the interdisciplinary connections between the two. So yeah, he’s just been amazing in that class. 

Yarin: So when you said that you’re now looking at the places where these two disciplines meet, you also mentioned in your submission something about the connections between earth science and ancient art history. And I would love to learn more about that. 

Jamrog: Of course. I think those are some of the interdisciplinary connections, like I mentioned, that I’ve started to become more receptive to and more open-minded about. I think you see a lot of that in fields like art archaeology, for instance. When you’re digging up fossils, or if you go to Pompeii to restore that archaeological site, you have to have knowledge of art history and Roman culture and how things were erected and how the site of Pompeii looked and how Roman culture operated.

Yarin: It sounds like there’s an interchange where you need to have a knowledge of art history to be able to put this artifact in context, but you also need to have knowledge of how the Earth works to be able to look at the artifact and understand what the artist was thinking or what the architect was thinking.

Jamrog: Right. In order to restore and take care of the site, you would need to have knowledge of how the Roman city actually historically looked, and also a knowledge of how igneous rocks out of volcanoes behave and the ways in which the landscape could have eroded over time and affected certain areas. And then there’s a policy that they can’t really reconstruct what was there, but protect what was there and learn what used to be there so they can parse the site as a whole and spread knowledge about it.

Yarin: How much of the science that you’re digging into is geology and how much is other sciences? 

Jamrog: Dr. Anderson is a geologist and specializes in geology, so his course focused a lot on how rocks can come into the study of earth science, and sustainability, and environment. And so I learned a lot about rocks in his class and there were a lot of labs about rocks. I’ve always been interested in rocks, so that was fun. But also, I mean, he continuously talked about how students could get involved in the world through various different interests they have in earth science, like how power flows through things, like developing technology to extract hydropower or developing fuel cells, applying knowledge in a lot of other ways. 

Yarin: So a lot of BUA students, I’ve gathered, are really passionate about this class. Why do you think this topic resonates so much with your classmates? 

Jamrog: I think it increasingly becomes an important field of study. And I think BUA students really pick up on that. And there’s been a lot of interest in making BUA more sustainable in the last few years, and learning what we can do to impact issues like climate change. And so, of course EE 105 is lovely because it introduces you to lots of different modes of earth science and how you can become part of the efforts to help the Earth. I also think there’s a legendary following of Dr. Anderson. I first heard of the class from students last year, who just fell in love with his stories and his personality. And I think he really makes the class very appealing to BUA students. And he offers a lovely introduction to those types of studies, because he makes it so exciting, and we crave that.

Yarin: That’s a very rare combination, that a subject can be timely and serious, but also very fun and enjoyable.

Jamrog: Yeah, the situation with climate change is very dire. He would always strike a very hopeful note in that there’s something you can do to get involved. But also a lot of the classes had very depressing content, because climate change is becoming more and more reality. And BUA students recognize that, but then also he delivers it in such an amazing, engaging way that I think is admirable. And it’s such an important topic for so many reasons. We need to learn more about the Earth because it’s the place we live and we need to understand how we affect it and how it affects us—but increasingly how we are affected, given the damage we’ve caused, and our many, many years of abuse of its resources. 

Yarin: Sally, thanks for sitting down with us. We don’t usually do this at the end of our episodes, but since you are a BU Academy senior, I was hoping you’d be comfortable telling us what your plans are now that you’re about to graduate. 

Jamrog: Yeah, absolutely: Well, I’m going to Bryn Mawr College, which is amazing. And I got the Presidential Scholarship. Very excited. 

Yarin: Oh, my goodness. A Seven Sister. Wow, very cool. 

Jamrog: Yes, exactly. I’m very excited. 

Yarin: Well, congratulations. We really enjoyed talking to you—sad we’re going to lose you to Pennsylvania, but it’s their gain. And folks, this concludes Season One of Today I Learned, a BU Today podcast. Thanks for tuning in. It has been a pleasure learning with you. Today I Learned is produced and engineered by Andrew Hallock and edited and hosted by Sophie Yarin, that’s me. See you around, and stay curious out there!