Senior geology major Reitman spends a summer in the Gobi

What do Kingston, N.Y. and the Gobi desert have in common? Just ask Nadine Reitman, a senior who spent the summer conducting paleo-bio-geographic research on the Gobi-Altai Terrane in Southeast Mongolia. In laypersons' terms, Reitman spent four weeks figuring out what kinds of organisms lived in that particular "block of the earth's crust" 400 million years ago. She found that the fossils on the Gobi-Altai Terrane matched up fairly closely scientists have discovered just north of Poughkeepsie in the town of Kingston.

But Reitman concedes that this is about the only practical application—"if you can even call it that"—of her summer work. Reitman applied to work in Mongolia as part of the Keck Geology Consortium, a conglomeration of geology departments at small liberal arts colleges. Why Mongolia? For Reitman, that was a large part of the draw. "It was Mongolia," says Reitman, "and c'mon, who doesn't want to go to Mongolia?"

Reitman joined a group of three American professors, two Mongolian professors, eight American college seniors, four Mongolian students, two cooks and three drivers, on a journey from the Mongolian capital city of Ulaanbaatar to a remote province in Southeastern Mongolia.

Reitman's plan was to fly into Ulaanbaatar on a Monday, then begin the four-day overland journey to the site in Shine Jinst on a Tuesday. However, on Reitman's first day in Ulaanbaatar, professor of earth science at Mongolian Technical University Min Jin, "explained that Tuesday is an unlucky day to travel, so we decided to leave on Wednesday. Then it rained on Tuesday, and the bridges were all washed out, so we left Thursday."

Although the incident was Reitman's initial introduction to Mongolia, it was not the only cultural difference she found shocking. "Ulaanbaatar is a post-Soviet third-world city that is loud, dirty, and run-down" said Reitman. She remembers that the suburbs of Ulaanbaatar are mostly made of gers—traditional circular houses made of felt and wood. Chingis Khan "has been their national hero since like, 1200, and continues to be." Reitman found it more than a little shocking to see "Chingis Khan airports, diapers, soda, and tons of vodka" in Ulaanbaatar.

But the landscape changed dramatically when Reitman and the rest of the Keck team reached Shine Jinst and they split up to do field research with the eventual hope of correlating data from various locations. Reitman spent most of the day unearthing fossils, then returned at night to "our own ger that we brought. It was our kitchen and office space."

The short-term goal of the Keck project was to determine "what the environment was like in Mongolia about 400 million years ago." The correlated data that Reitman and her team compiled "can be read like a chronology of the area's rocks. That means they can be put in chronological order without gaps in between, which is great because hopefully we can have a complete picture of how the biology changed over time, which can correlate Mongolia's landmass with other land masses."

According to Reitman, fossils were one of the ways plate tectonics became accepted as a geological phenomenon. "You know, Mongolia wasn't always connected to Russia and China," she says, "It's all because of plate tectonics."

Reitman is realistic about the nonscientific community's enthusiasm about plate tectonics and paleo-bio-geographic geology. "The challenge for this kind of research is that 99 percent of the world never cares what paleontologists do." She pauses and reevaluates her statement: "Maybe 99.9 percent."

Reitman is hoping to study not paleontology but hydrogeology in graduate school. She she describes hydrogeology as "studying water underground. Hydrogeology combines geology and geophysics to discuss water availability. And that is a big issue today." Reitman finds herself looking for applications for what she's learned to measure and test as a geology major at Vassar, but admits that she "[hasn't] found that in paleontology."

Reitman's trip to Mongolia not only helped narrow her academic interests, but also gave her a head start on her senior thesis project. Working with the Keck team gave Reitman experience doing her own fieldwork, conducting her own lab time, and participating in a student symposium that will close in December with in a sort of "practice peer-review process." It's an experience "not a lot of undergraduates will get," says Reitman.

When Reitman applied to the Keck Consortium in the spring of her junior year, it was with the understanding that the research would culminate in her senior thesis at Vassar, a project that has taken her from Southeastern Mongolia to the hills of the Hudson Valley. "I love geology," she says, reaching for the hiking equipment she's brought to our interview. And with a smile, Reitman adds, "I really do. I'm so excited about my senior project." She takes her things and heads off to cut rocks in the geology lab in Ely Hall.