Behind closed doors on the second floor of the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News is a surprise: a spacious, white laboratory with long tables covered by specimens in fluid-filled containers, computers, and journals with carefully recorded notes. Giant snakelike exhaust tubes and various tools provide clues to the research that takes place here in what the staff calls “The Clean Lab.”

Beyond, a metal garage door opens to a steel balcony, revealing “The Wet Lab,” where the remains of an ancient artifact lie. In both places, museum conservators are uncovering the secrets found in the turret of the Civil War Ironclad, the Monitor, dragged from the depths of the ocean a few years ago by a team of Navy divers collaborating with NOAA. History, archeology, chemistry, and biology collide in this amazing undertaking. With 210 tons of material to explore, seven staff members dedicate countless hours to the project. Two of them are women.

Today women are leaping ahead in the sciences, claiming their places in disciplines beyond those traditionally associated with females. In a region like Hampton Roads with several universities, NASA, museums, the military, and other scientific operations, women with degrees in the sciences and the passion to follow unique career paths are inspiring the next generation to observe, learn, and discover our world—in the air, under the water, and on the earth’s crust.

THE GEOLOGIST

“Rocks talk to me. I love geology and I love teaching,” said Professor Azan Tabrizi, an enthusiastic instructor in the geology department at Tidewater Community College’s Chesapeake Campus. The lively, intense, dark-eyed woman is on a mission: to share her excitement about the earth’s composition. Azan brings passion and real-life earth encounters to a varying demographic—thanks to TCC’s multiple campuses, online classes, and reasonable tuition. She opens her students’ eyes to the extraordinary in everyday materials.

“When my students say, ‘It’s only dirt,’ I tell them, ‘No, it is soil, and soil is created from eroded rock,” Azan explained. “We could not survive on this planet without the rocks that make the soil where we grow our food.”

Born in Iran and educated in the Middle East and London, Azan says that it was her father—a man she considered an unschooled genius—who insisted that his daughters and sons pursue an education in whatever field they desired. The six siblings embraced math and science. A geology teacher in Azan’s high school inspired her to study the earth itself: the rocks and the stories within them. The fascination she felt then launched her life’s passion.

After working in the oil industry for some years, Azan and her husband, also a geologist, immigrated to the United States. In 2000, Azan began teaching physical geology at TCC in Virginia Beach, starting part time with one class and one lab a week. Today there are many sections of both physical and historical geology offered at TCC’s campuses in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake as well as online courses. All of Azan’s classes fill up quickly, and she makes sure to meet her online students face to face at least once a semester, keeping in contact with up to 90 students at a time.

One of her online students, Martha Lupton of Virginia Beach, returning to higher education in mid-life, took both of Azan’s classes this fall. Raised in the country, Martha said, “Mrs. Tabrizi changed a lot of what I thought. I always had a sense of what fault lines were and a little about plate tectonics. Because of what she shared and offered us, it made me understand things more deeply, like the passive coastline we have here. It made me feel, oh, boy, this is amazing!”

Every semester, Azan takes her students to Sandbridge to explore the precious elements of our own shores. They take samples of sand from various locations near the water, analyze it, and share their findings.

Azan feels that women make excellent science students because they are patient, observant, and care deeply about the world around them. She models this behavior in her nurturing attitudes towards her students. She insists that every student make a presentation in front of their classmates, learning public speaking skills and gaining confidence.

“I tell them, ‘I will be there with you, standing behind you. You can do this!’” she said.

Several intriguing rocks sit on the desk in Azan’s humble TCC office.

“This is a piece of sedimentary rock, which preserves all the events happening for millions and billions of years,” she said, holding a stone given to her by another geologist. She points out evidence of an earthquake in a broken dark line that permeates the rock. She calls it “my jewel,” cradling it in her hands and holding it close to her heart like a mother holding an infant.

“This is more important than a five-carat diamond for me,” she said with a tender smile on her face. Whether or not Azan’s students embrace geology as a career, she knows that she has changed the way many of them feel about science. But as they leave her classroom, she sees them picking up gravel and identifying types of rock.

Though she has traveled all over the world, Azan has one place still to see, a geologist’s dream destination: the Grand Canyon with its layers of rock and amazing contrast and colors. Perhaps this is the year she’ll encounter the earth in a new way.

MUSEUM CONSERVATORS

Most people who visit a museum usually have no idea about what happens behind the scenes. In the case of the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, conservators Tina Gutshall and Elsa Sangouard combine the intensity of scientists, the curiosity of detectives, and the painstaking skills of archaeologists in their work on the Monitor. Everything they observe and handle with gloves or tools has been underwater for more than a hundred and forty years. And everything tells a story.

Elsa came to the museum several years ago from France with a background in physics, archaeology, and museum conservation.

“Any object can be a challenge scientifically,” she explained. “You can go very deep or not, depending on the interest you have in it.”

Tina, who has worked at the museum for 11 years, began in the collections management department. She left the museum for a brief period and returned in 2002 as a conservation assistant. She is fascinated every day with what the team is discovering. It may be as small as a button or as fragile as a kneecap.

“This is a national historic icon, any one of these artifacts,” Tina said. “It’s not something we can literally drill into to take a sample. We have to take the utmost care with everything that we work on.”

Sometimes the objects must be x-rayed to observe the construction. In a recent case, the team had to separate parts of a “sponge,” a sort of cannon plunger, which Elsa described as “a giant bottle brush” used for cleaning the cannon between uses. It had a metal handle and a wooden end. She donned a pair of gloves, squatted beside a plastic storage bucket filled with liquid, and lifted a large, rounded object, tapered and cone shaped. This object had a function in the Civil War.

Then she picked up a sealed glass bottle from another tray on her work table, filled with a murky white substance. Like good scientists, Elsa and Tina hypothesize who the bottle may have belonged to, what could be inside, and now how they will determine the contents.

As in any laboratory, safety protocols are necessary since the women use many chemicals in their practice.

“We have face masks that we wear and higher-end partial face masks so that you can change the filters out depending on if you are using an acid or a solvent,” Tina said. “You have to wear a lot of protective gear if you are working with sodium hydroxide powder because it can turn your skin to soap if you are not careful.”

Most people may envision conservators repairing tapestries, paintings, or sculpture.

“In the art world,” said Tina, “you can analyze the composition of the paints, using scientific principles, and that same kind of analysis can be applied to any object conservators are working on for anything around the world.”

New technology helps.

“With the advent of a lot of analytical equipment, we can learn so much. We even use 3D laser scanning—also referred to a metrology—down to a micron level in our work,” she added.

Both Tina and Elsa experience daily awe, looking at objects hidden underwater for so long—like a navy blue wool coat, torn in pieces, now partially assembled like puzzle pieces, resting in a flat container. They even found a few unmatched shoes.

“Every time I’m working on the coat, I’m wondering whose it was,” Elsa said reverently. “Then I’m looking and handling a shoe; it’s very personal.”

The Monitor project is slated to continue until at least 2030. With thousands more objects to explore, examine, and identify, these museum conservators hope their work reveals more of the story. No matter what they do later in their careers, this will stand out as one of the most exciting experiences of their working lives.

THE ORNITHOLOGIST

While some scientists seek hidden clues from long-lost objects, others are captivated by animals living in the here and now.

At the Virginia Aquarium in Virginia Beach, 48-year-old Crystal Matthews is curator of birds and supervisor of quarantine. She oversees the museum’s aviary, filled with over 100 birds of 30 species. She also quarantines new birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals destined to join various exhibits in the museum. The Eastern Shore native says she gained experience watching birds and their behavior as a girl on outdoor trips, walking and fishing with her dad in Chincoteague and Assateague.

“I learned the waterfowl, first of all, then songbirds,” Crystal said. “And at a young age, I joined a bird club and realized I had a knack for identifying birds. I started paying attention to their behaviors, which is critical to what I do now.”

“Observation is key for any scientist, especially working with animals,” she continued. “You have a fine-tuned knowledge of what’s normal versus not normal.”

She pointed out various birds in the open, well-designed aviary—the cormorants and ibis, the owls in their tiny wooden box, a large pileated woodpecker, wild turkeys, gannets, and ducks. As some of the birds plunged their bills into their back feathers, she explained that they’re “zipping up” their feathers so that when they encounter water, they can stay dry. The ducks sit in clumps, like middle school girls in a cafeteria, each group with a boundary and safely distant from the others.

Crystal followed her natural passion to school, eventually earning her B.S. in zoology at the University of Maryland and a Master’s degree at William and Mary. Her thesis focused on black skimmers, birds that nest along the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. Her love of shore birds native to this part of Virginia provided her with an excellent background for this position, where she not only cares for animals, but also supervises six full-time and three part-time museum employees.

She believes that working in this setting presents opportunities to stretch commonly held assumptions about bird behavior, allowing her to find out what is working and what needs to be amended. Crystal has to maintain the integrity of life for birds outside and inside, such as the songbirds and quail in the Upper River Room and the finches in the komodo dragon exhibit.

“One of the things that you really learn as a scientist—and I learned this in school and it happens on a daily basis here—is to problem solve,” she said.

But beyond this museum, Crystal believes her work is fundamental to the health of the planet. Looking at the bird population, says Crystal, gives clues to the health of the marsh. While the Virginia Aquarium is a sanctuary for many animals, brought to the museum because they couldn’t survive in the world, there’s another reality beyond the airy, woven netting which tents over the aviary.

“If the environment is not doing what it’s supposed to do, if the crab and minnow population is down, the birds won’t have enough to eat,” Crystal said. “It’s all part of the circle of life. They have to feed to reproduce, and if their population is falling off, then there’s something wrong with the marsh.”

In Crystal Matthews’ case, her work as an ornithologist was born of her own natural skills, interests, and experiences, as well as her life among watermen in her family. For other women, the inspiration of teachers and mentors combined with a healthy dose of curiosity can open doors to fulfilling science careers and many discoveries along the way. 

Kathleen Fogarty writes regularly for Tidewater Women.