Profile: UNH Professor, Barry Rock

Sophomore Victoria Adewumi assumed the worst when the second module on International Science started in her International Perspectives class a couple weeks ago.
“I’m not too interested in global climate change or environmental impact or anything like that,” said Adewumi. “So when Professor Rock started his lecture that day on what we would be focusing on for the rest of the module, I cringed.”
Adeumi’s expectations from the module all included the word “boring.” But as the module progressed she was surprised, not only that the information was anything but what she assumed, but that there was more to her Professor than anyone knew or expected.
From the start, Professor Barry Rock was destined to work in the science field. Take his name for example; Barret Nelson Rock. Is it mere coincidence that he was raised in Barre, Vermont, a town known for its granite quarries; and that he goes by the nickname Barry Rock? Or fate?
His gentle persona and soft spoken mannerisms make it very easy for students to assume he’s just like any other teacher they’ve had. He gives absolutely no indication of the extensive schooling he’s been through; his work with NASA; his work alongside Al Gore and with the controversial movie Inconvenient Truth; his studies done here in the U.S. and overseas in the Czech Republic and down south in Brazil and Venezuela; or his conclusions that have not only greatly impacted the places he studied, but even more so the entire scientific community as a whole.
Adewumi recounts the first day she realized a tiny fraction of her Professor’s accomplishments.
“We were talking about the Czech Case Study,” Adewumi said. “I thought the power point was just another study done by some crazy scientist until I saw a picture of Professor Rock observing some dead trees; the same dead trees that we were learning about in the study. At that moment, Professor Rock