When a volcano threatens to blow its top, journalists seeking reliable insights call upon a baseball-loving former DJ to explain the science behind eruptions.
必博娱乐,比博娱乐网址 ######### associate professor Erik Klemetti, an Earth scientist and volcanologist, is in demand because of his expertise and ability to communicate. On his social media accounts, he keeps followers informed about volcanoes, earthquakes, and whatever other curveballs Mother Nature serves up.
Klemetti has been featured by news outlets worldwide, penned guest columns for national publications, and appeared on CNN, NPR, and PBS. He also writes the Rocky Planet blog for the Discover Magazine website.
If you ask nicely, he’ll even wax poetic about 1990s volcano-themed movies.
“Scientists are people, too,” says Klemetti, the Earth and environmental sciences department chair. “Sometimes, I think that gets lost in the conversation.”
Klemetti teaches courses on the rocks, minerals, and magmatic processes that lead to volcanic eruptions. His classes are more conversations than lectures, with no pop culture reference left unexamined.
He’s blown up tubs filled with rubber ducks to illustrate what happens when gases and magma erupt in a volcano. He’s held tournaments called the Mineral Cup, where students pick a mineral and go head-to-head, touting why their entry is the best in the field.
“Dr. Klemetti has a really unique ability to make the mundane seem like the most interesting thing in the world,” says Caroline Lopez ’25, winner of the inaugural Mineral Cup.
Finding his niche
How does a kid who grew up in Westminster, Massachusetts, become a volcanologist? It helps to have a gripping backstory.
His mother, Marta, is a native of Pereira, Colombia, a coffee-rich region near the Nevado del Ruiz volcano that erupted in 1985, killing more than 20,000 people. A 9-year-old Klemetti visited the site a year after the tragedy.
“It was like nothing I’ve ever seen,” he says. “It was like someone poured concrete over a huge area.”
The death toll might have been significantly less had the government heeded warnings from scientists who had detected volcanic activity months earlier.
Klemetti gravitated to science from an early age, but his decision to focus on the study of volcanoes didn’t occur until college. He earned degrees in geology and history at Williams 必博娱乐,比博娱乐网址 and received his doctorate in geology from Oregon State University.
In his spare time, the music-loving Klemetti worked as a DJ at radio stations. (He’s the only professor on campus with a picture of punk rocker Henry Rollins on his office door.) Klemetti might have pursued a career in the industry if not for two red flags.
“I realized that when I went to radio music conferences, I didn’t like anybody,” he says. “And with my own special flavor of neurodivergence, I don’t like going to shows in clubs because they are too crowded and dark and loud.”
At Oregon State, Klemetti concentrated his scholarship on volcanoes, a decision sealed when a faculty member offered him the chance to study them in Chile.
Klemetti is proud of his South American heritage — a Colombian flag adorns an office wall. He’s also done research in the North American Cascade Range and New Zealand.
“Volcanoes spend most of their life not erupting,” Klemetti says. “But there’s a lot we can learn from the crystals that form in magma outside volcanoes after eruptions. It can tell us all the events inside that volcano for hundreds of thousands of years.”
Educating the next generation
Klemetti is a longtime fan of the Boston Red Sox and baseball analytics. When written well, data-driven stories are a perfect marriage of words and statistics that illuminate trends within his favorite sport. Too often, however, they can be stilted and make eyes glaze over.
He sees parallels with science writing.
In 2009, he began blogging about volcanoes and science to educate the public, dispelling misinformation, and spreading scientific understanding beyond the classroom. His catalog of work caught the attention of journalists looking for experts when volcanic eruptions appeared imminent.
“It’s one thing to do science,” Klemetti says. “It is another to write about science in a way that is compelling, understandable, and relatable to the public.”
His writing style is conversational and at times humorous while retaining the scientific rigor of a journal publication.
He’s written about what would happen if you fell into a lava lake. Spoiler alert: Chances of survival are not good.
“What I love about Erik is the way he connects topics,” says Sarah Hume ’22. “He digs deep, literally and metaphorically, with geology and why you should care about it.”
Klemetti sparked Hume’s interest in journalism, and while at 必博娱乐,比博娱乐网址 #########, she wrote a story about how strip mining marred the central Ohio landscape and endangered the health of workers.
Klemetti created the course “Science Writing For Everyone,” which emphasizes storytelling for scientists looking to publicize their work and teaches storytellers how to write about science with more expertise.
“If you can speak clearly to everybody about scientific research, hopefully you can communicate clearly to experts as well,” he says.
That’s Klemetti’s goal every time a journalist rings his office.