UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Five years ago, Andrew Nyblade became head of the Penn State Department of Geosciences with a road map based on his vision for the department. In 2019, just like all other road maps of that era, a stack of new tasks quickly piled on top of it.
Nyblade instead found himself embroiled in the fallout of a global pandemic. COVID-19 sidelined in-classroom instruction, lab and field work, research, travel and conferences: nearly all aspects of the routine activities in the department.
Nyblade, a professor of geosciences with a research focus on geophysics and tectonics in regions such as Africa, Antarctica and Pennsylvania, said his best laid plans would have to wait. In the immediate, he needed to steer his department through uncharted waters.
“The COVID-19 pandemic really shifted my focus,” said Nyblade, who stepped down June 30. “We were able to accomplish some of the things I set out to do such as improving diversity among our faculty. But my initial task became continuing research and education during the pandemic. My main goal became making sure the department could endure the pandemic.”
Knowing that research was a longtime strength of the department, Nyblade worked to create opportunities for people to stay in touch during the lockdown and sought research alternatives for faculty and students who couldn’t travel. In one case, the department rallied to create a virtual experience for students who were required to participate in field camp to graduate. The department used Google Earth, drone footage, images and datasets to create a learning experience much like the traditional one.
Nyblade joined Penn State as a National Science Foundation postdoctoral scholar in 1992 before joining the faculty two years later. He was met by a welcoming and accepting mentoring system from senior faculty, so that’s something he wanted to preserve, despite the pandemic challenges.
He made a few key faculty hires that expanded the department’s research breadth while fulfilling his goal of increasing diversity of the faculty because historically geosciences is one the least diverse science fields.
“In retrospect, I think the department is doing extremely well,” said Nyblade, who will remain on the geosciences faculty. “We’ve made a lot of hires and many of them were made during the pandemic with completely remote candidate searches. To me, that’s the overall highlight of my tenure: we hired tremendous junior faculty in the past five years and at the same time improved the diversity of the department.”
Nyblade grew up in Tanzania, the son of missionaries. Later during his research career, he returned to Africa for research and teaching. For a geoscientist, it’s a fascinating place for tectonic research. But it’s also an opportunity for budding geoscientists there to create career opportunities while understanding the Earth beneath them.
Diversity has always been a focus for Nyblade. It’s why, with the help of colleagues in South Africa, he co-founded AfricaArray, an initiative to train and educate Africans in scientific fields vital to natural resource development. The goal was to promote, strengthen and maintain a workforce of highly trained African geoscientists and researchers for Africa. Nyblade plans to publish the results of the 20-year effort during his sabbatical this year.
Countless studies point to how an increase in diversity leads to a stronger workforce and Nyblade said he believes his profession is leaving a lot of great ideas behind.