By Matthew Cabeen '07
Growing up in small-town New England, Kristina Faul never would have guessed that one day she’d be a paleoceanographer at a small women’s liberal-arts college in northern California. Through a journey marked by special mentors and local church families that “adopted” her, she has ended up achieving success both in her scientific career and in her ministry, where she is inspiring the next generation of scholars.
The eldest of three children, Kristina grew up in New Hampshire as the daughter of a Congregational minister. Her parents, who met at Gordon College in Massachusetts, gave her a solidly grounded Christian upbringing, and her father baptized her at age 12. “It was definitely a believer’s baptism,” she recalls. However, in her Congregational New England world, going to church each week was at least as much a matter of social tradition as of personal belief.
It wasn’t until high school that Kristina’s faith solidified, when she went away to boarding school at Phillips Andover Academy. She was something of a minority, as a “scholarship kid” among many wealthy students, and one of only a few Christians there. However, she quickly got involved with a group run by FOCUS (Fellowship of Christians in Universities and Schools) and had weekly Bible studies. “It wasn’t a hostile environment,” she notes, and drew encouragement from a family at a local church that “adopted” her during her time at school. She was especially excited to go to Andover because they had an observatory—Kristina had wanted to be an astronomer ever since she was inspired by her sixth-grade teacher. She worked at the observatory and studied math and science. Her guidance counselor at Andover thought she’d be a perfect fit for a small women’s college, but she had other ideas. Still wanting to study astronomy, and encouraged by an “adopted grandfather” (and MIT alumnus) she had met when he judged her eighth-grade science project, she applied to MIT and was accepted.
Arriving at MIT, Kristina entered the astronomy program. She attended church at Park Street Church and participated in Seekers, their college fellowship group. Then she went to Astronomy Camp at Lowell Observatory in Arizona her sophomore year. There, she learned that the real work of astronomy didn’t involve much looking at the sky, and that she didn’t enjoy the daily tasks. “The computer ran the telescope for you, and then it was all computer work,” she says. “I was happy that my desire to be an astronomer propelled me towards math and science, though” as she quickly changed her major from planetary science to Earth science, a move that at MIT didn’t even require her to change departments. MIT had recently opened a climate change institute, and Kristina was inspired to study climate change.
Kristina had always imagined going to graduate school and getting a PhD. But as her time at MIT went on, she began having second thoughts, and considered doing a master’s program in environmental policy. Her senior year, she responded to an advertisement from a faculty member who needed a lab assistant, she spent a year working in the lab of Maureen Raymo (now at Boston University), where she did her senior thesis project. Her work there whetted her appetite for research, and so she decided to take a year to do research at the venerable Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) in Massachusetts. There, she worked as a research assistant for William Curry, a paleoceanographer. Not only did she receive great mentoring from him and from other colleagues in the field, she also met two Christians, Ed Peltzer and David Chapman, who were researchers at WHOI and with whom she attended church and Bible studies. All of these mentors and friends were very supportive of her continuing her education. “Without them, I might not have continued,” she says. “It seemed that everywhere I went, God provided a family for me.”
She decided on UC-Santa Cruz for her PhD in paleoceanography. Paleoceanography is concerned with the geological history of the oceans and their sedimentation patterns, which can inform us about the chemistry and biology of the oceans in the distant past. Upon arriving in California, she had quite a culture shock, having spent all her life thus far in New England. “Weather, people, food, attitudes, the way church worked” all were different. In California, she says, “people went to church only if they believed something,” not just for tradition’s sake. She felt very free to be openly Christian in her graduate department, even though she only met one or two others in the department during her time there. “I got more questions from Christians about my being a paleoceanographer,” she laughs, “than questions from colleagues about being a Christian!” She found then and still finds now, as a professor, that her scientist colleagues are very tolerant of Christians.
One important thing that happened to Kristina in Santa Cruz was that she got her PhD. The other was that she met Ricardo Cortes, now her husband of seven years, at a Bible study. She speaks of Ricardo, a police officer, with refreshingly great love: “he’s my best friend, my spiritual partner, the best part of my life.” After graduating from Santa Cruz in 2001, she began her postdoctoral work at Stanford, and she and Ricardo were married in 2002. She was at Stanford for just two years before she got a job offer from Mills College, a small liberal-arts college, in Oakland.
Kristina has been teaching environmental science in the chemistry department at Mills ever since then, and recently received tenure. There, she advises and mentors the leaders of the InterVarsity student group on campus. Mills is distinctly different from the liberal-arts colleges scattered throughout New England and the Midwest. The oldest women’s college west of the Mississippi and one of only a few on the West coast, its student body comprises many more financially needy (95%) and minority (1 in 3) students than an average liberal-arts college. About 40% of the women are first-generation college students, and many of them are commuters and mothers who are going back to school, which drives up the average student age a bit. Kristina recalls one lady she had in class who was 92 years old, aiming to get her college degree before becoming a centenarian (she’s still working on it!). Even though Mills is too small to have a specific program in paleoceanography, she has managed to keep an active research program, thanks in large part to collaborations with colleagues at research institutions.
Kristina’s research program has two primary thrusts. The first is looking at nutrient cycling in the ancient ocean. There was a massive amount of global warming about 55 million years ago thanks to a huge injection of carbon (primarily methane) into the atmosphere, the exact cause of which remains unknown. The Earth recovered from this period of warming very quickly in geological terms (10,000-100,000 years), and Kristina’s research looks at the role of ocean life in this rapid recovery. Specifically, she looks at the role of the nutrient phosphorus, which is a limiting factor in the ability of ocean organisms to grow and thus sequester carbon in their biomass. Her second interest is looking at the role of phosphorus in the modern ocean, and with a colleague at UC-Davis she is developing a technique that uses deep-sea coral as a way to measure historical phosphorus concentrations in seawater. Now on sabbatical, she is traveling to Wales this fall to do some work with colleagues there, continuing on the theme of ancient climate change. With the importance of climate change in the political and scientific world in the past few years, her work has taken on a renewed importance as researchers and world leaders look for ways to minimize the climate impact of human activity.
Kristina sees Christians as having a responsibility to be at the forefront of conservation and good stewardship of the earth, remembering God’s commandments to Adam and Eve in Genesis. She also uses care for the environment, along with social justice issues, as “bridges” between Christians and nonbelievers that can foster cooperation and lead people to Jesus. In mentoring Christian groups on campus, Kristina always points out that Jesus cares about many issues that are in the public mind today.
Does Kristina have advice for Harvey Fellows beginning their careers? “It’s tough to keep up on research when teaching at a small liberal-arts college,” she warns. “At a small school you will have to balance teaching, research, and service, and will have few colleagues in your field.” She urges finishing PhD students to think very carefully about the advantages and disadvantages of becoming a professor at a teaching college or a research university. She also stresses the importance of being rooted in the local church community. “That emphasis on local church involvement was one of the things that drew me to the Harvey Fellows program,” she remembers. And her advice as a climate-change researcher? “If we consume less and then use the excess to help others,” she says, “how can that be bad?”
Dr. Kristina Faul lives in Oakland, CA with her husband, Ricardo Cortes, a police officer in Fremont, CA. They attend First Covenant Church in Oakland.
