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Biography

Robert Schenck is both a College Laboratory Technician and an Adjunct Instructor for the Department of Physical Sciences at Kingsborough. As an Adjunct Instructor, Mr. Schenck usually teaches Oceanography, and occasionally other courses. Mr. Schenck is the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) Operator for the Cosmochemistry Facility within the Department of Physical Sciences. This instrument is used to carry out research by Departmental Faculty, instruct students, and is also rented out to outside researchers which generates revenue for the College as a whole. Mr. Schenck is certified by the college's Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) Committee to teach Writing Intensive versions of college courses.

Mr. Schenck studied biology and geology as an undergraduate at SUNY Albany. Mr. Schenck enrolled in Adelphi University's MS program under the Biology Department, where his advisor and mentor was Professor Beth Christensen. It was with Dr. Christensen that Mr. Schenck first started studying foraminifera (tiny chalky plankton) from ocean sediment cores. This lead to his dissertation research on climate, oceanography, and the history of upwelling off the coast of Southern Africa. In the course of this research Mr. Schenck also worked with Dr. E. C. Farmer of Hofstra University and performed some lab work at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) in Palisades NY. This research involved traditional work: identifying and tabulating different species of foraminifera based on the shape of their fossil tests, and also isotopic work: examining the ratio of Mg and Ca in the plankton using an inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrophotometer (ICPOES). It was also at Adelphi University that Mr. Schenck began serious use of a Scanning Electron Microscope to examine foraminifera and other specimens.

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