Have fears of the unknown ever kept you from attending office hours? Are you nosy about the interests of your professors, but you can’t quite find a proper reason to sign up for a meeting with them? Do you like interior design and enjoy falling into “MTV Cribs” YouTube rabbit holes? If so, our new feature series of office tours, TU Cribs (MTV, please don’t sue us) is for you. 

Every week, we will be interviewing professors known for their office hours, whether for their cozy ambiance or their iconic office decor, and getting to know them and their spaces a little better. This week we stopped by the office of the much-loved geology professor, Diane Smith. 

Smith’s office is tucked behind some lab space on the second floor of Marrs McLean Hall. The office opens up to reveal a spacious and well-organized area with huge windows that overlook sprawling tree branches. Since a lot of Dr. Smith’s work takes place in a lab or in the field, her office isn’t necessarily the main place where she gets work done. Nevertheless, it holds many memories and cool treasures from the field. 

Gallery • 9 Photos

Photo by Andrew Duong

Q: What classes are you teaching this semester? A: This semester I’m teaching two sections of Volcanology. It’s the study of volcanoes, but in the context of plate tectonics and planetary earth processes in general. We talk a lot about magmas and how they are generated, what their properties are and hence how they influence eruptions in different types of volcanoes. I think students are surprised by how many different kinds of volcanoes there are. It’s also an OVC course, so the students have to do a PowerPoint presentation and also [a] poster presentation, so they develop their presentation skills orally and also visually in the class.