Franklin & Marshall College

Matthew Unterman '04

When Matthew Unterman entered Franklin & Marshall, he never envisioned living in Edinburgh, Scotland, much less working with an international team of scientists trying to reconstruct the weather patterns of the Ice Age.

Like many first-year students, Unterman didn't have clear career plans when he started college. "All I really knew was that I wanted to do something in computer science and geology. I realized that Franklin & Marshall had a great geosciences department, but I wanted to somehow meld my two interests."

Today, Unterman does just that, thanks to the research opportunities available to him during his undergraduate years. "I did a multi-year, independent research project. Franklin & Marshall created an interdisciplinary curriculum that met my needs. Academically, it was terrific."

This intellectual discovery process led to both his master's degree at Duke University and his current Ph.D. work at the University of Edinburgh. "Now I'm working on creating what I like to call The Weather Channel for the Ice Age. I am constructing and analyzing one of mankind's most accurate representations of the Ice Age.

"I am running simulations that look at wintertime 21,000 years ago and show you on animations that I compiled from outputs from supercomputers what weather might have been during the peak of the Ice Age. Is that not surprising and cool?"

Unterman's natural curiosity and excitement for learning found many outlets during his years at Franklin & Marshall.

"One of my best college memories was when my professor and I had special access to the Smithsonian archives. You go back into the vaults and there are fossils and you start opening up these drawers, and when we opened one of them this massive puff of smoke and dust came billowing out of the drawer and engulfed us as though it had not been opened in hundreds of years. It was like something out of Indiana Jones."

Unterman fondly remembers the casual conversations and ease with which he could engage his professors, both inside and outside of the classroom. "Working closely under some great professors, I discovered more about the fields I was interested in. I began learning what the actual, existing knowledge base was, what happened in certain studies in the past and what was going on now and potentially in the future. I would have lunch with my professors. The environment at F&M was just conducive to that - it's such a free, supportive academic setting."

Unterman benefited from the College's commitment to cutting-edge technology, too. "I was able to work with multimillion-dollar machines in the geology department that are every bit as sophisticated as what has been available to me at the graduate level. That was a huge advantage in preparing me to excel in academia."

It wasn't just the academics that made Franklin & Marshall such a successful experience for Unterman. The social opportunities were equally inspiring. "I came from Manhattan and someone might be wondering how I could adjust to Amish country, but from the first moment I was on the campus, the surroundings were so enriching and I have so many fond memories that it was far and away the best four years of my life.

"I went back recently to give a talk on my current research and the minute I stepped onto campus, I felt like, ‘Wow, I could do another four years here.'"