Last February one of those winter bugs going around prevented Dr. Cashman from giving her talk to us. This February she has just returned from doing field work in Mexico and says she’s feeling great and looking forward to treating us to an inside look at what happens when the earth exhales its fountains of fire, or breathes more quietly with molten rock roiling within, permitting only occasional clouds of steam or maybe ash to emerge, forever announcing the dynamism of our planet.
Katharine Cashman’s recent trip squeezed its way into a busy teaching schedule at the University of Oregon. Last term she taught "Earth Materials" and this term she's teaching "Geologic Hazards." Her website states that the Earth Materials’ class “provides an introduction to the systematic study of rocks and their minerals from which they are formed. The science of Mineralogy is of fundamental importance in understanding processes as disparate as the formation and evolution of planets and the origin of life. Moreover, economic and environmental components of mineralogy are crucial for understanding many contemporary problems in the earth, life and materials sciences.” (How many of us still have, and perhaps even use once in awhile, our Dana’s: Tables for the Determination of Minerals?) Nowadays we could supplement the Tables with gorgeous pictures of gems and minerals on a website maintained by the Smithsonian Institution.*
Her class this term, "Geologic Hazards," include floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and landslides. Students examine aspects of these natural hazards including their origin, their geography, and their impact on societies world-wide.
In last year’s short biography Katharine stated that her career was “framed by eruptions of Mount St. Helens." However, her career has taken her to many other field sites, including Hawaii, where she has done extensive study. Katharine might show us some of the beautiful hummocks, coils and waves from the Pahoehoe lava flows in Hawaii or the more jagged, rough surface of the aa flows. And do we have an equally musical name for our Cascade flows? Katharine grew up in Providence, Rhode Island and remembers well participating in bird walks and trail clearings with her parents, active participants in The Audubon Society. As a youth, she enjoyed hiking and skiing and the world of nature. Now she says, “My job is my pastime as it involves spending time out-of-doors and traveling to volcanoes around the world doing field work.”
She received her BA with Honors (Phi Beta Kappa) in Geology/Biology, from Middlebury College in Vermont. She earned her MS with 1st Class Honors, from Victoria University, New Zealand, and received her PhD from The Johns Hopkins University in Maryland in 1986. In between degrees she worked at Woods Hole and the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory; after earning her PhD she started her teaching/research career at Princeton University. In 1991 the University of Oregon hired Dr. Cashman to join the Department of Geological Sciences and she arrived in Eugene.
Aside from her numerous publications, Katharine has earned many awards including the 2003 UO Distinguished Professor award in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Many young adults now are too young to remember May 18, 1980. “At 8:32 Sunday morning, May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted. Shaken by an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale, the north face of this tall symmetrical mountain collapsed in a massive rock debris avalanche. Nearly 230 square miles of forest was blown down or buried beneath volcanic deposits. At the same time a mushroom-shaped column of ash rose thousands of feet skyward and drifted downwind, turning day into night as dark, gray ash fell over eastern Washington and beyond. The eruption lasted 9 hours, but Mount St. Helens and the surrounding landscape were dramatically changed within moments.”