Exploring News & Features - Molly Miller's Adventures in Antarctica

Miller viewing slides of past Antarctic expeditions

Photo by Daniel Dubois

Molly Miller began her fascination with the earth and its history as a young child. While on a camping trip when she was nine, she discovered a fossil that she identified in Golden Book of Fossils as being 350 million years old. Although her interest had been piqued, in the years that followed it gradually faded away for lack of encouragement.

“There was no strong earth science education at the schools I attended,” says Miller. “Our high school had excellent science, but there was not one teacher who appreciated and wanted to teach about earth history and earth processes…. As a result, I was not a bit interested in science when I went to college.” When she took a geology course in her freshman year, however, she quickly rediscovered her old enthusiasm for seeing herself in the perspective of geologic time and past life.

Miller's desire to gain a complete worldview was fueled by the activist atmosphere of college in the 1960's. She spent one summer working in a refugee camp in southwestern Ethiopia and after graduation she revisited Ethiopia as a Peace Corps trainee. Upon her return, she completed her master's degree at George Washington University, where she met and married her husband, Calvin Miller, and taught earth science in high school.

Growing up in Schenectady

Video by David F. Salisbury

Before starting in the doctoral program at UCLA in 1973, the Millers worked as Ranger Naturalists at Bryce Canyon National Park. “It was an idyllic place to live and work,” Miller remembers. “The National Park Service had just started hiring female rangers. I was the first at Bryce Canyon and some of my co-workers had trouble adjusting.”

Giving lectures and leading nature walks at Bryce Canyon hardly seemed like work for the Millers. “I loved talking with people about processes that formed the spectacular scenery. It was great preparation for teaching introductory geology and it convinced me that people's respect for the earth grows tremendously when they understand how it works.”

When the couple was ready to enter academia, however, they faced a new problem. “It was very difficult, especially at that time, to have two jobs – two academic jobs – and have any kind of normal family life,” says Miller. “So we decided very early on that the way to do this is essentially to share one job and have both parents involved in bringing up the children.” Their emphasis on family brought them to Vanderbilt in 1977, where they were the first couple hired under the university's “full status, partial role” program. They each had an academic appointment but with only half the teaching responsibilities.

"Vanderbilt was very progressive. The advantage to the small geology department getting two people with very different specialties." comments Miller. "Still, the arrangement was highly unusual. It was perfect when our kids were young. Among other things it allowed us both to take extended field trips. Then, when we were ready, it allowed us to become full time.”

Cast of a borrow made by a prehistoric animal that Miller is studying

Photo by Daniel Dubois

(Her husband's research interests are focused on the southwest United States, where he is studying how volcanic activity – particularly the evolution of deep magma chambers – has shaped the landscape of Arizona and surrounding areas of California and Nevada over the last 2.5 billion years. Closer to home, he and his students also are investigating the protracted geological processes that created the southern Appalachian Mountains.)

One of Molly Miller's specialties is determining the origin of sedimentary rocks using diverse types of data, including the activity of animals that lived in the sediment before it was compacted and cemented into rock. Even though the animals themselves are not preserved, their movements and dwelling are. These behavioral patterns, referred to as trace fossils or bioturbation, allow geologists like Miller to determine the environment in which the rocks were deposited. This ability made her a prime candidate for work in Antarctica.