On Friday, Feb. 27, the geology department hosted professor Laura Guertin for a talk titled “Stories of Communicating Scientific Ocean Drilling, From Text to Textiles,” exploring the importance of storytelling in scientific research. 

Guertin has served as an Earth science faculty member at Penn State Brandywine since 2001, where she teaches introductory-level geoscience courses for non-STEM majors, has received EPA funding, and served on several projects related to geoscience education and outreach. She has also received many national recognitions and accolades. Recently, she went on an expedition with the International Ocean Discovery Program (IOPD). 

The IOPD is an international marine science collaboration aimed at exploring Earth’s history and dynamics using ocean-based research facilities to study data in seafloor sediments and rocks and to monitor subseafloor environments. 

IOPD expedition 

This IOPD expedition launched from Cape Town, South Africa, and went west. “We went across the mid-Atlantic ridge, and … we drilled a transect of cores that were perpendicular to the ridge, shallower towards the ridge, and then we got a little deeper as we went out. We went through the sedimentary layers,” Guertin explained. “We all know the rocks get older the further away you go from the mid-Atlantic ridge, right? What we don’t have a good understanding of is how they get older. What exactly is happening with the geochemical changes, especially with the action of those hot fluids that are circulating through it?”

Guertin explained that this expedition was an international endeavor, involving many people from all over and from different scientific backgrounds.  

Science, quilting, and storytelling

Guerin’s role with the IOPD was an onboard outreach officer; her main duties “were to write blog posts about what we were doing, post on social media and also do ship-to-shore video broadcasts.” Guerin explained that these video calls were conducted for groups, mainly K-12 classrooms, via iPad, and were aimed at explaining both the science they were conducting, as well as the human aspect of doing the science. 

Other strategies Guerin used for outreach from the ship included using “Google Earth instead of ArcGIS [or]Story Maps because I was connecting with a lot of K-12 classrooms who are much more familiar with Google products. I was also concerned about the refresh rate with ArcGIS versus Google. I thought [Google Earth] would be much quicker on the ship because of our spotty internet connection.” 

She used Google Earth to place a pin on the coordinates given out by the daily operations, then she would write an explanation of the day and include a non-science-related photo.  

When returned to shore, Guerin found another way to tell the story of the expedition — through quilting. Guerin explained that she “made 19 quilts, which is a lot, but it’s in honor of the 19 windows that are across the front of the bridge. So it’s 19 views looking into living and working at sea.” 

Some of these quilts shared the human aspects of living on the ship, like the triangle patterns with fabric chosen “based on a lot of the questions I got, especially from kids on the ship. Did they have mac and cheese? Did you play any games?” There is a taco fabric to represent their taco Tuesdays, crosswords for the games they liked to play, whales for the whales they saw and much more. 

Other quilts were data representations, according to Guerin, like the one called “Blue Skies and Cloud Covering.” This quilt represents the “octascale, which is the measurement of what percentage of the sky is covered with clouds, whether it’s a very blue sky or it gets very gray and cloudy. It’s a scale up to eight.” Guerin explained that this had nothing to do with their drilling study: “This is just kind of a measurement that’s taken on the ship. But what I love about this quilt is that during one of the tours I was doing, I did a tour for a kindergarten class. And I’m like, oh boy, how do you get kindergartners connected with what’s happening on the ship, right? It’s kind of technical. I asked their teacher, ‘What are you talking about with kindergartners right now?’ So I could try to connect with that audience. She said, ‘Well, we’re doing recycling, and we’re looking at clouds and identifying clouds.’ I’m like, well, we got clouds on the ocean, so I can do that.” 

After Guerin visited with the class, the kindergarteners started measuring their own sky and comparing it with the cloud cover of the ship. “You’re not going to publish a paper on that. However, these little kindergartners were inspired to go and be little citizen scientists and take measurements of the sky. So you never know what the impact is going to be of the work that you’re doing or the stories that you’re telling,” Guerin said. 

Other quilts were designed in honor of specific parts of the crew, according to Guerin, like the drill team or the bridge team. The fabric material itself was also chosen to tell part of the story- each quilt was made from a specific fabric type made in South Africa, according to Guerin. 

The study of the samples collected on this voyage have not been completed yet, as analysis takes up to 5 years, according to Guerin, but the story of the expedition and the research done is still spreading thanks to the quilts. “You know, quilting guilds don’t invite scientists to speak, but they let me come because they know I have quilts,” Guerin said. “So I’m speaking to garden clubs, all different groups that don’t hear about science, and the quilts are opening those doors. So as long as that’s still happening and I’m making an impact in the community, I will continue to make my science quilts.” 

Guerin concluded the talk by saying that “the most important thing today is that you share your science. You share your story about you as a scientist. Because if you don’t control your narrative of your research and your identity, what’s going to happen?”