From stone mason to stone scholar, IUP senior, Fayette Co. native earns coveted Goldwater Scholarship

Susan Adams won’t take offense if anyone refers to her as an accidental scientist.

The 24-year-old native of Smock, a tiny Fayette County village near Uniontown, never imagined herself immersed in any kind of science, let alone geology.

She graduated from Uniontown Area High School and the masonry class at the Fayette County CTI in 2015 and promptly entered the workforce, laying stone and building foundations.

Yet, six years later, she is the recipient of a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship, preparing for her final year of undergraduate work at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She is looking forward to graduate studies in marine geophysics at a top college on the West Coast, if all goes according to her plans.

The scholarships, underwritten by the Goldwater Foundation in memory of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, are intended to encourage the nation’s most promising undergraduates to pursue studies in natural sciences, math and engineering. Nearly 60% of those awarded Goldwater Scholarships since 1989 have gone on to earn a Ph.D. or other doctorate. Goldwater alumni currently in Ph.D. or doctoral programs will bring the total up to 70%, foundation officials said.

Adams hopes to soon be among that number.

But her route to science has been neither straight nor easy.

She thought she would earn a living working in the construction industry. After two years working as a stone mason, she realized her body would not stand up to a lifetime of such heavy labor.

It was not a case of the young woman shirking hard work. She has spent time working on a dairy farm — milking cows, cleaning barns and feeding calves — since high school and still drives 90 minutes back to Fayette County every weekend to work at Ferens Farm in Dunbar.

After two years of working construction, she opted for a job at UPS. When that proved less than ideal, she set her sights on police work and applied to IUP’s 20-week municipal police academy.

“I really wanted to get into the state police and figured if I went to the police academy and worked on a local force for two years, I could get into the State Police Academy,” she said.

When she learned the municipal police academy was being canceled because of lack of enrollment, Adams shifted gears and enrolled as a criminology major at IUP.

Her first year was tough.

“After being in the workforce, I didn’t know how to talk to other students and people my age. I decided I wasn’t going to be miserable for three years, so I started to force myself to talk to people. I decided I needed to get a sport,” Adams said. “So I looked into rugby and women’s ice hockey. Hockey called back first, so I joined a women’s developmental league.”

Things were beginning to jell. As she began her sophomore year, she thought she’d found her niche and an alternate route to the State Police Academy.

Things changed after she took an introductory course in geology.

“I was just taking it to fill a science requirement,” she said.

A geoscience professor, Gregory Mount, mentioned a field project he was hosting that spring in the mountains near Penn State that would include work using ground-penetrating radar, electrical restivity and data analysis. Adams signed on. The program included students from Dickinson College, Penn State, Rutgers and Temple University.

“Five days into the field course, I realized this is what I wanted to do and that I was in the wrong major,” she said.

That fall, during a course taught by Professor Jon Lewis, she became even more determined that geoscience was her calling. She managed to secure a passport in three days to embark on a tectonics research trip with Lewis and his team to Taiwan during winter break.

Lewis said he came away in awe of Adams and her passion for research.

“In Taiwan, she jumped in and did the heavy lift on the special inquiry, which is really hard, and she’s sticking with it. She’s so enthusiastic. It’s really a joy to work with her,” he said.

“Jan. 22, the day we left, the first case of covid hit Taiwan,” Adams said.

Two months later, IUP shuttered its dorms and classrooms and everything went online. But Adams didn’t let up on her work.

She credits Lewis with pushing her to seek the coveted Goldwater Scholarship.

“I probably spent about 100 hours on the application. I didn’t think I’d get it, but I thought it was good practice for applying for grants for graduate school,” she said.

The award will pay her final year of tuition at IUP. It was a godsend. Adams, a first-generation college student, said she has been on her own for years and has been working her way through college, taking out student loans and applying for scholarships.

“It’s just been me and my younger sister for about the last eight years. She was ecstatic for me when I told her about it,” Adams said.

Although her path to science was winding, Adams said she is laser-focused on earning a Ph.D. She hopes to be accepted into a graduate program out west next year. She is aiming for a career in a marine geophysical lab, perhaps with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the U.S. Geological Survey. She would like to teach at the university level.

Lewis doesn’t doubt for a moment his student — who transitioned from stone mason to stone scholar — can achieve her goals.

“I plan on learning everything I can from her in the next year while I still have her in my lab,” he said.

Although IUP does not have a graduate program in geosciences, it does require undergraduates to do research work. Lewis believes that has contributed to the success of his students.

Adams will be in good company as an alumna of the program.

Dan O’Hara, a 2014 IUP graduate who studied with Lewis, also won a Goldwater scholarship. The first-generation college student from Ebensburg is finishing his Ph.D. in geology at the University of Oregon. A student from Cresson is about to finish a Ph.D. in Oregon and another, from Claysburg, is doing postdoctoral studies at Dartmouth.