Socrates Fellows Who We Are 2010-2011 Staff Johnnie Lyman
Johnnie is a third generation Alaskan who performed her research at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) at UCSD. She has a Bachelor's degree in Geology ('03) from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and a Master's in Oceanography ('09) from SIO.
As an undergraduate at NMIMT, she studied Geology while working as a lab manager in a stable isotope lab. She attended a six week geology field camp in northern New Mexico. She taught a graduate lab course on stable isotope mass spectrometery, and became interested in applications of mass spectrometery to climate change. Upon graduating, she worked for the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources for a year as a field geologist mapping the rocks of Taos, NM. During the winter, she worked as a hydrology field assistant, measuring water depths of local wells in Santa Fe, NM.
As a graduate student at SIO, she researched the past climate of the earth. Her research focused 55 million years ago, at the Paleocene-Eocene (P-E) Boundary. This was a time of vast and rapid warming, the cause of which is largely unknown. Through the use of shells of marine plankton collected from ocean deep sea sediment cores, she reconstructed climate in different levels of the ocean across millions of years. This research into deep time helps our modern understanding of the carbon cycle and climate feedbacks.
In 2008-09 Johnnie was a Socrates Fellow, first working at Mira Mesa High School with 9th grade Earth Science and 10th-11th grade Biology students, developing the Microlife and Climate Change project using marine plankton to show climate changes off the coast of San Diego. In 2009-10, Johnnie was a second-year fellow, working at Eastlake High School in 10th-12th grade general Chemistry. This second major project, Excitement of Chemistry, showed students how her research with X-Ray Fluorescence can show them changes in lead usage here in San Diego.
Johnnie is now the Assistant Project Coordinator for ScienceBridge, working with Socrates fellows project development and implementation throughout the year. She also provides classroom support for teachers implementing ScienceBridge labs, and helps develop curriculum for the ScienceBridge Labs program.
When she's not working, she enjoys rock climbing, running, and most other excuses for being outdoors.
