The Department of Geography and Geology at SHSU recruited my services in 1990, after two long teaching stints at the University of Colorado and Lincoln College in Illinois. My teaching duties have been primarily in freshman-level geology and meteorology. We have recently written eBooks for the meteorology and geologic hazards classes, which are marketed with our own lab manuals. I also teach upper-level Environmental Geology and Geomorphology classes, and for many years team-taught an Honors Earth Science class.

Soon after my arrival at SHSU, I solicited the help of geography and geology majors to serve as field assistants for several research projects in southern Utah. My main research interests then and now are a product of those early years. Initially, the focus of our research was the origin of several clusters of giant weathering pits developed in the Jurassic Entrada and Navajo sandstones. These are the largest bedrock weathering pits on Earth; several are 15+ meters deep.

Other research projects in southern Utah include an assemblage of giant sandstone landforms, including clastic necks, megafonts, and rock doughnuts. Many of these landforms are cored with fluidization pipes of massive size (10s of meters in diameter and >100 meters in height), and these pipes became our next research emphasis. Most recently, we have been examining a host of small-scale weathering and eolian features and their Martian analogs (e.g., bedrock polygons, 'turtleback' weathering, dedos, moki marbles/blueberries) as well as the role of rock surface microorganisms in forming case-hardened sandstone surfaces.