Oakland, CA - Kristina Faul, assistant professor of environmental sciences at Mills College, recently embarked on a research cruise along the California coast to study corals providing environmental archives of ocean circulation and climate change for the past several hundred years. Serving as shipboard co-chief scientist, Faul investigated deep-sea bamboo corals living on extinct volcanoes on the sea floor, from 500–2500 meters in depth.

Ten scientists from UC Davis, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, University of the Pacific, Stanford, and California State University (Long Beach) also worked on the voyage from June 17–27, 2007. They cruised on the 117-foot small twin hull RV Western Flyer to three locations: Pioneer Seamount, northwest of Half Moon Bay; Davidson Seamount, south of Big Sur; and Monterey Canyon. A Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) was used to investigate coral samples from the underwater slopes of the seamounts. The research cruise was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Underwater Research Program, which provided a grant to UC Davis professors Tessa Hill and Howard Spero.

“My primary goal is to reconstruct changes in nutrients and productivity in the past oceans as recorded in the corals and sediments, said Faul. “We will research our samples for the next few years to measure changes in ocean circulation, water temperature, and water nutrients.”

Fascinated by reconstructing ocean history using information recovered from cores deep below the ocean floor, Faul says the project “will tell us what California’s climate and oceans were like for the past few hundred years, for example, whether El Ninos were more common, and the strength of the California current.”
As an undergraduate at MIT, she majored in earth and planetary sciences and explored the field of paleoceanography.  Faul completed her PhD in earth sciences at the UC Santa Cruz in 2001. She was a post-doctoral researcher at Stanford, and began teaching at Mills in 2003.

Mills College is a nationally renowned, independent liberal arts college offering innovative degree programs for undergraduate women, and graduate degree and certificate programs for women and men. Consistently recognized as one of the top 100 liberal arts colleges in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, Mills currently ranks among the top 20 most diverse liberal arts colleges. The New York Times recently selected Mills as one of three leading California colleges for students to consider.

In 2006, the Washington Monthly College Rankings named Mills a leading liberal arts college based on community service, research spending, quality of preparation for graduate education, and social mobility. In addition, The Princeton Review’s annual guide, the Best 361 Colleges (2007) included Mills for the second year in a row among top U.S. institutions offering students an outstanding undergraduate education.
 
Nestled in the foothills of Oakland, California, on 135 lush acres, Mills provides a dynamic liberal arts education fostering women’s leadership, social responsibility, and creativity

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