My home state of Pennsylvania is ribbed by interlocking ranges of the Appalachian Mountains and flanked on its southeastern corner by gentle hills and coastal plain. A lifelong fascination with geology began with family camping trips to rugged terrain in the American West. Observing geological features was a joy that became a hobby and then a career aspiration. My decisive career moment happened at the age of 12 while charmed by the complexities of upturned and faulted sedimentary rock layers at the Dinosaur National Monument in Utah/Colorado, United States.

During the 1950s and 1960s, a perception persisted that professional career opportunities for women were limited to nursing, secretarial work, or school teaching. I was accepting of that arrangement because through the narrow lens of school studies, cultural norms, and as the daughter of an educator, earth science secondary school teaching appeared achievable and acceptable. Adjacent to university courses required for degrees (BS and MS degrees at Bloomsburg and Shippensburg State Universities of Pennsylvania), I enrolled in multiple field courses in geology and glaciology. The additional coursework raised my confidence in the ability to conduct scientific work. Yet, the immediate need to earn a living led me to teach eighth-grade earth science for three long years before the imperative to conduct science eclipsed my desire to teach it. In the Summer of 1978, at a time when few articles published in two seminal glaciology journals had female authorship (Hulbe et al., 2010), I began a summer of glaciology fieldwork for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and unknown at the time, a 44-year multi-disciplinary career. My recent retirement affords time for reflection.

My involvement in scientific work began in 1978 at the USGS Project Office-Glaciology in Tacoma, Washington, United States, in support of glacier monitoring in Alaska and the American West and with developing chronologies of Mount Rainier’s glaciers (Driedger, 1986). Two projects motivated by eruptions at Mount St. Helens examined the dimensions of glaciers on the Cascade Range volcanoes and the impacts of volcanic ash on the snowpack (Driedger, 1980; Driedger and Kennard, 1986). Studying ice-marginal and sub-glacial discharges at Alaska’s Columbia Glacier (Meier et al., 1980; Walters et al., 1988) was a career highlight. When the Glaciology office closed in 1986, as a victim of budget cuts, I transferred to the nearby USGS Water Resources District Office where multiagency coalitions were highly valued and their development was expected of all personnel. The mandate prompted me to initiate a long-term study of Mount Rainier glacier-generated debris flows which were damaging park infrastructure (Driedger and Fountain, 1989; Walder and Driedger, 1995). This project caught the attention of scientists at the relatively new USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory and resulted in an invitation to join their staff. The move was a career nexus because work involved glaciers, volcanoes, hazards, and science communication. It coincided with the passage of Washington State’s Growth Management Act (Washington State Legislature, 1990). Public officials contacted the USGS frequently to obtain information of volcano hazards. This resulted in an extensive network of interagency professional relationships. Later, engagement with public officials in volcano hazard working groups and with professional information distributors (news media, community and educators, and visitor information specialists) created an informal and transdisciplinary regional coalition—a Volcano Risk Management System (VRMS) in the Cascade Range (Wright et al., 2023), built upon the professional missions of each member organization and desired by all for effective risk mitigations.

Coalitions and long-term collaborations can be viewed as the beating hearts of scientific endeavors that pump expertise and transdisciplinary ideas throughout a project, inspire a broad exploration of scientific questions and solutions, and empower its full capabilities. Transdisciplinary approaches are critical because they transcend boundaries between academic cultures and engage members in mutual learning and with lived reality. Research projects that are transdisciplinary incorporate stakeholder knowledge in the development of initial research plans and final deliverables, thereby ensuring societally robust products and solutions rather than purely scientific analyses (Nowotny, 2003; Hirsch Hadorn et al., 2008; Perry et al., 2016). Involvement in coalitions can aid early-career researchers during the simultaneous interplay of career and self-development (Modestino et al., 2019).

Transdisciplinary coalitions have introduced me to scientists of many disciplines and to public officials, communicators, and citizenry. I have learned science and leadership skills, modeled others’ research approaches, work ethics, and methodologies, and recognized the information needs of multiple professions. Coalitions have granted me long-term friendships and increased empathy and understanding of the world. My assertions are based upon experiences within coalitions noted in the following sections.

Prolonged and broad involvement in response during the 1980–1986 eruptive periods at Mount St. Helens prompted regional emergency managers to assemble long-term and multijurisdictional volcano hazard working groups for the development of emergency management response plans, community education, and strategies for cooperation and communication during crises at threatening volcanoes in Washington and Oregon.

Volcano hazard working groups support public officials’ needs for policymaking, communication, coordination, mitigation, and response planning. The multiagency “Living with a Volcano in your Backyard Outreach Program” supports community education by empowering professional information distributors [news media (Driedger and Scott, 2010), community and school educators (Driedger et al., 2005), and park rangers (Driedger et al., 2002)] to convey volcano safety messages as part of their organization’s communication strategy (Pierson et al., 2014; Driedger et al., 2020). All organizations work within the scope of their profession’s mission in support of the Volcano Risk Management System (Wright et al., 2023), which follows general tenants of Community Based Disaster Risk Reduction (CBDRR) (Cadig et al., 2016) and acknowledges the differences in professional cultures described by Newhall (2017). Figure 1 shows the author beside a lahar victim tree that yielded slices for display at public outreach events.

Binational exchanges have boosted transdisciplinary coalitions locally.

Since 2013, USGS volcano scientists have implemented a dozen binational exchanges of emergency planners and responders, educators, and park rangers who work in at-risk communities of the United States and Colombia, and Ecuador and Chile. Organizers designed this transdisciplinary program as a highly motivating learning environment to encourage the understanding of volcanic disasters and effective mitigation options, prompt participants to strengthen emergency planning efforts, and to foster trust-building, socialization, and coalition building among people who must cooperate for volcano risk reduction. Participants visit sites of previous volcano disasters and speak with survivors and other-nation counterparts, and they observe education and emergency response capabilities and facilities (Driedger et al., 2020). Trips have resulted in transdisciplinary deliverables that fulfilled the experiential learning cycle advanced by Kolb et al. (2001) and discouraged isolated and top–down interactions discussed by Fischhoff (1995). This program is supported by the Volcano Disaster Assistance Program (VDAP), a joint U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)—U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) program.