Kate Perkins, an instructor in the Department of Physics and Engineering Physics, teaches earth science and environment hazards at Southeast Missouri State University. However, she did not find her love of geology and rocks in college.

"I was an art major," Perkins said. "I took a physical geography class and we went on a field trip to Death Valley and this was many, many years ago when I was living in northern California."

Perkins said the field trip made her fall in love with rocks and she started to take geology courses after it.

Perkins has had many other jobs before teaching. She has been an emergency medical technician, goat milker, veterinary technician, jeweler, she has packed worms, worked on a tuna boat and more.

"I don't know what is, I've always had itchy feet," Perkins said. "I've always wanted to know more about everything, and what better way to know more about everything than to do some really odd things. So I'm cross-trained, I'm adaptable."

However, "out of all the weird jobs" Perkins has had she says being a professor at Southeast has been the best one. Before moving to Missouri, Perkins had been living in California with her husband and 7-year-old son. After the sudden death of her husband, she decided to travel cross country with her son so he could see the country.

"I just decided I'm going to take the kid across the country so he knows that there's something else besides little northern California," Perkins said.

After driving coast to coast and covering 28 states, Perkins' truck broke down in Missouri.Once her truck was fixed she went back to California, bought a house online, moved to Missouri and has been here ever since.

Of all the rocks that fill the shelves in her office, she knows which is her favorite -- the one her late husband got for her in Michigan.

"I went out there one time and I was like, 'Oh, I want to see banded irons,' and we so we drove all the way and it was a horizontally blowing snow storm and he had this car with heated seats," Perkins said. "And he said, 'You stay here,' and this is before we got married and he climbed up this outcrop and beat on the outcrop in horizontally blowing snow to bring me this rock and I'm sitting there thinking, 'Wow, if he ever asked me to marry him I'd do it' and he did and we did. So this is like my favorite rock."

She tells her students to "look with the eyes of a child" when taking her classes.

"The geosciences are extremely important," Perkins said. "If you live on this planet you should know at least a little bit of how it works, you know there are things that humans can control and there's things that we can't."

Besides teaching, Perkins is planning to open a goat dairy during spring break.

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