department service
Led organization of weekly seminar series for one year. Actively sought diverse participants and >96% of speakers were female (27/28 speakers). This effort required inviting speakers, planning travel and meeting schedules, and managing a $5,000 budget (2018-2019).
Founded weekly Caltech journal club focused on earth history that had >100 meetings and was awarded $250 annual budget. Download a list of which papers we read (2018-2022). Currently running a weekly earth history/geochemistry reading group at UChicago.
Speaker on Caltech graduate fellowships panel for 4 years (2017-2020) and speaker at “FUTURE Ignited”, a graduate recruitment event for students of color (2020).
Member of 2022 search committee for new director of Caltech’s Center for Teaching, Learning, and Outreach and member of 2023 search committee for the TC Chamberlin Fellowship.
community service
Co-convener/primary convener of AGU session, “Earth Surface Processes and the Global Carbon Cycle” (2020 - 2024). Link to the 2021 conference page.
Primary convener of AGU session, “Understanding the Influences of Sedimentary and Oceanographic Processes on Geochemical Archives” (2021 - 2024). Link to the 2021 conference page.
Convener of multiple paleoclimate Goldschmidt sessions.
2022: “Advances in understanding Cenozoic climate change: synthesizing and reconciling shifts in surface processes, ecology, atmospheric composition, and seawater chemistry”. Link to the 2022 conference page.
2023: “Ocean circulation, carbon and climate: Perspectives from proxies and models”.
2024: “Coevolution of life, climate, and environment from the Archean to Phanerozoic”.
Peer reviewer for Science Advances, American Journal of Science, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, JGR: Earth Surface, JGR: Biogeosciences, G-Cubed, Chemical Geology, Nature Communications Earth & Environment, Applied Geochemistry, ISME.
teaching / mentoring
Mentoring UChicago undergraduate student on a project studying calcium isotope ratios in river water from Iceland and Oregon (2022 - present). Co-advised high school summer internship studying sulfur isotope systematics of plants (2018).
Co-taught a six-week summer geoscience course for underserved Chicago high school students in 2023 and 2024 through UChicago’s Office of Special Programs. This effort grew out of facilitating Saturday morning geoscience classes.
Earned Caltech Certificate of Interest in University Teaching by completing formal coursework and participating in workshops focused on evidence-based and inclusive teaching practices.
Teaching assistant for “Marine Geochemistry” (winter term, 2019-2020) and “Paleoceanography” (winter term, 2020-2021), both mixed graduate/undergraduate courses taught by Jess Adkins.
outreach activities
“Preston has developed dynamic, engaging outreach opportunities for middle and high school students that introduce them to areas of study unfamiliar to most people, from using the geologic record to solve mysteries about ancient biological processes to using seismic techniques to understand glacier movement, and everything in between. Besides opening up fascinating new worlds of research, Preston’s team has shown students how exciting careers in earth sciences can be by sharing their field work experiences, talking about their travel to destinations all over the world, and even how what we learn about Earth can be applied to studies of Mars and other planets. The unique offerings of the presentation series Preston coordinated were universally well-received, and generated in-class conversations that teachers used as springboards into other areas of the schools’ earth science and biology curricula.” - Kathryn E. Cahalan, Outreach Program Manager of the Caltech Center for Teaching, Learning, and Outreach
Organized two distinct four-lecture seminar series for local schools in LA: “Polar programs” on high-latitude fieldwork and “Biogeochemistry” on biogeochemical cycles. Participated as one of four speakers in each program and recruited students and staff from Caltech and JPL as other speakers, resulting in 40 hour-long lectures given to middle and high school students.
Booth volunteer at the Los Angeles March for Science (2017) and Caltech companion event Science for March (2018, 2019), as well as the UChicago South Side Science Festival (2022).
Participant at approximately a dozen “Science nights” at elementary and middles schools in LA presenting scientific demonstrations; for example, discussing rock and fossil samples, making comets out of dry ice, or using a spinning bike wheel to illustrate conservation of angular momentum.
Speaker for the Long Beach Urban Math Collaborative, a program for Black and Latinx boys interested in STEM.
Giving a lecture on isotope biogeochemistry in Blair High School’s biology class. Depending on the classroom and curriculum, topics include taphonomy and the history of life, glacial-interglacial cycles, isotope ratios in natural materials, the age of the Earth, what college is like, and my day-to-day life as a professional researcher.
Making comets out of dry ice, dirt (organic molecules!) and water during the Caltech “Science for March” event. Another demo at our booth was blowing into a cup of water with a pH meter to demonstrate ocean acidification, and adding carbonate to the cup to demonstrate buffering.