By Todd McLeish<\/p>\n
![\"Martha](\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/916\/McConnell_AD-MG_0217-500x333.jpg\")
Martha McConnell took an unusual route to becoming the first lecturer at GSO. The Connecticut native studied geology as an undergraduate, then served as a research assistant on projects that mapped the rocks beneath Antarctic ice before becoming an assistant scientist with the Sea Education Association.<\/p>\n
After earning a doctorate in paleoceanography, she detoured into the world of marine policy as a NOAA Knauss Fellow working for New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg, where she authored the first bill about ocean acidification. She remained in Washington for six more years, serving as the polar program manager for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the National Academy of Sciences.<\/p>\n
She returned to New England as a visiting faculty member at the U.S. Coast Guard and worked in private industry before joining the GSO faculty. \u201cThis opportunity is a great fit for me,\u201d McConnell said. \u201cI\u2019m excited to use my range of experiences to teach topics from a variety of different perspectives.\u201d<\/p>\n
She is teaching an undergraduate class in coastal resilience this fall as part of the university\u2019s Grand Challenges program, and she anticipates teaching other Grand Challenges courses in the future, as well as some graduate oceanography classes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love when students really connect with a topic, but it\u2019s also a challenge to help them connect,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of variety in my coastal resilience class, which is helpful as I try to reach the students from various majors and all class years. \u201cAs much as I love teaching, I also love mentoring,\u201d McConnell added. \u201cI\u2019ve had amazing mentors in my life, so I hope to eventually take on a mentoring role on campus as well. That\u2019s another place where I think I can serve the campus community.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/916\/Oldham_AD-MG_0032-500x347.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
When Vero Oldham first enrolled in college, she was sure she was going to become a medical doctor, but she quickly discovered a love of chemistry instead\u2014especially when she realized she could study it outside. \u201cThat sounded like the most fun possibility,\u201d said the Graduate School of Oceanography\u2019s newest assistant professor. \u201cThe ocean is a great place to learn about chemistry.\u201d<\/p>\n
A native of Ontario, Oldham spent a summer working at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Science after earning her bachelor\u2019s degree, then studied trace metal chemistry at the University of Delaware for her doctorate in oceanography. She analyzed mineral-microbe interactions as a postdoc at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.<\/p>\n
Now her interest is in how elements cycle in the ocean. \u201cI focus on how fast reactions happen, where they happen and under what conditions,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m especially interested in looking at small-scale, nitty-gritty reactions and applying them to larger scale problems and questions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Next summer, for instance, she travels to the Baltic Sea as the manganese expert on a research team studying the chemical reactions taking place at the interface of waters that are devoid of oxygen at the bot-tom but contain oxygen at the surface. It is a critically import-ant subject to understand, since climate models are predicting widespread deoxidization in many water bodies.<\/p>\n
Oldham is also beginning a project to fabricate micro-electrodes that can be used to profile elements in sediments or the water column. She plans to build them in her lab and deploy them in a variety of systems, from Narragansett Bay to hydrothermal vents.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Baltic project is an extension of what I\u2019ve already been doing; it\u2019s my bread and butter,\u201d she said. \u201cBut this new project is something I haven\u2019t done before. It\u2019s my exciting foray into something new.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Meet Martha McConnell and Veronique Oldham<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2120,"featured_media":158724,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7,2403,1987,2594],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aboard-gso","category-issues","category-publications","category-spring-2020"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158295"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158721,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158295\/revisions\/158721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}