After turning down a position at Columbia University, 33-year-old Petra Dekens, a geoscience teacher, is happily teaching at SF State.

Dekens was offered two career choices after she received her Ph.D. from UC Santa Cruz: either accept a post doctorate position at Columbia University in New York City or be a full time professor at SF State.

“I wanted to teach. If I went to Columbia I would be doing more research. They didn’t value teaching,” Dekens said on her reason for turning down Columbia’s post doctorate offer. “San Francisco State is a great place to do both.”

New Ph.D. applicants to SF State’s College of Science and Engineering are preferred to have post doctorate experience. When a new professor was being hired for the fall semester, Dekens was not one of the applicants chosen to be interviewed.

It wasn’t until the top prospect chose a job someplace else, that Dekens was reconsidered.

“Even though we have a [post doctorate experience] preference sometimes you have to break your preference and Petra is a definite example,” said Sheldon Axler, Dean of College of Science and Engineering at SF State who was highly impressed with Dekens’ resume even without post doctorate experience.

Another factor in her hiring is her background in climate change studies. As issues like global warming have gained much interest recently, the science world is spending more and more resources and energy on finding answers to its problems. Professors able to instruct students in the field are in high demand.

“The class we teach is unique in that it requires an understanding of a variety of different fields,” said Dempsey who teaches planetary climate change with Dekens in the College of Science and Engineering. “Petra knows that she compliments in fields such as biology and oceanography.”

So far so good, has been the general feeling from faculty, staff and students even though she is in the beginning of her first semester of teaching.

“She’s new and hasn’t really taught our class. Though [Dekens] brings a different perspective to the class,” said 29-year-old Jason Jordan, a meteorology major.

Dekens’ small class load her first semester has her teaching only 39 students in two classes, one in which she co-teaches with Professor David Dempsey. Her other class is marine geology.

“She definitely adds to the discussion. She brings some good insight into the class,” said 18-year-old Henry Bartholomew, also a meteorology major. Bartholomew is one of Dekens’ planetary climate change students.

Dekens does admit that the logistics of running a classroom has been hard to adjust to. But overall she is looking forward to the coming semester and her time in San Francisco.

“As far as research goes I’d like to contribute on how the climate is going to respond to global warming,” Dekens said. “As far as my goal in teaching is I’d like to be good at it, get people to think about science and through science think about climate change and their role anthropologically in climate change.”