For decades, Bud Wobus has been passionate about uncovering the Earth’s history and sharing that excitement with students, colleagues, and lifelong learners. Bud has dedicated his career to making geology accessible, engaging, and hands-on.

His journey in geology education has always centered on the power of research. In the 1970s, he helped establish the WAMSIP-Geology Consortium, creating field-based research opportunities for students at liberal arts colleges. This vision expanded in the 1980s when he co-founded the Keck Geology Consortium, now a nationwide network of 17 colleges dedicated to undergraduate geoscience research. Through these programs, Bud has shaped the experiences of over 1,400 students, including nearly 100 Williams geology majors.

Beyond the classroom, Bud has spent more than 40 summers at the Colorado Outdoor Education Center, leading geology and natural history field programs for Williams alumni. His love for exploration has taken him across the world—from the Rockies to Patagonia, Iceland, Australia, and beyond—guiding travelers through some of the planet’s most fascinating landscapes. Each trip has been a learning experience, not just for his students and alumni but for Bud himself, as he continues to study, document, and share the wonders of the natural world.

Through teaching, research, and adventure, Bud Wobus has spent a lifetime inspiring others to look at the ground beneath their feet with curiosity and wonder.

Mike Rodriguez, Program Director of The Nature Place, sits down with Bud Wobus, Sanborn alum from 1954 and Williams College Edna McConnell Clark Professor of Geology, Emeritus. Bud primarily studies igneous petrology with a heavy focus on the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and New Mexico. Mike was a student of Bud’s at Williams, where Mike majored in Geosciences and Psychology and took his first course in the department with Bud. A few years after graduating, Mike reconnected with Bud in 2021 at his retirement party from Williams where Bud encouraged Mike to head out to Colorado to do some work at High Trails Outdoor Education Center. Now, Mike calls the ranch home as he stuck around and now works at The Nature Place. In this conversation, Mike and Bud talk about Bud’s connection to Sanborn, Sandy, special spots, and Bud’s overall career.

Our chat starts with Mike, and follows with Bud’s replies. Follow along for their brief conversation here…

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Mike 

First off, thank you so much for taking some time out to chat today. I’m joined by Bud wobis, one of my professors, and a big reason that I ended up out at COEC. So thank you so much for taking some time out to chat today, Bud. The first thing I want to start with is what is your connection to COC? How did you find it? How long have you been involved, in what capacity; kind of just your role and connection to COEC?

Bud

Well, first, Mike, welcome back to your old mineralogy lab room here. It’s a little cold today. I don’t think they’re heating this building. Anyway, I go back a long ways, almost as far back as anybody who’s still alive. I suspect I was a camper in 1954 at the age of 13, and I was fortunate in getting there, because it was a very small operation, and I’d lived in St Louis, near St Louis, about 20 miles away, and so it wasn’t well known, but my parents, some of my parents, friends in St Louis, had sent their son the year before. This was when there was only Big Spring, and it was about 50 boys, and that was it. This was 1954, so not too many years after it all started, but one of the biggest moments in my life, really was that. My friends told my parents about Sandy coming to town to show the movie. He was on the road like Willie Loman trying to push the camp with this eight millimeter movie at various places. And when he was at their house to show the movie, he called my parents, and he said, “I’ll come to your house to show the movie.” And he said, “it’s not a big deal. It’s a 25 mile drive, but I’ll come on over.” And when he came in the door, that was a life changer. Frankly, that was it. My parents had scheduled me to go to a canoe camp in Minnesota with some of my friends, but I didn’t like water and I didn’t want to go to Minnesota. 

So going to Colorado that first summer really opened my eyes to the mountains. And after that first summer as a camper, just for four weeks, one of my counselors, coincidentally, was a guy named Pete Lipman, who was a English major at Yale, and he went and got stuck with leading the hike to the copper mine and the crystal beds and all that kind of stuff, which I later did many years myself. But he kind of enjoyed that. And he went back to Yale, changed his major to geology, went on to Stanford, got a PhD, went with the USGS and retired recently as probably the preeminent volcanologists in the whole Geological Survey, an incredibly iconic member of the geological fraternity. And we’ve been sort of in touch over the years, but we both realize we got our start in geology at the same time at the same place. So not that we’re trying to groom geologists, I’ve had a few other campers over the years that have gone into the profession, but that one summer at Big Spring was my one summer at camp. 

My parents said, “Okay, next year, it’s your sister’s turn.” And she went to Shoshone, which was a sort of a sister camp up in Rollinsville, and that was it until I was old enough to go back as a counselor. So I went back as a counselor when I was at Washington University. And I forget what year that was, late 50s maybe, I don’t know, around 1960 I guess, and I joined the staff and kind of never left. I was a counselor, per se, for many, many years when they changed to a co-ed camp and founded High Trails. All of us male chauvinists at Big Spring, said, “Oh God, there goes the neighborhood” and that’s where I met my wife. So, you know, the story continues to go on and, and then I watched the sunset of the Puma Hills for so long that I said, “maybe I’ll do that for my PhD thesis.” By that time, I’ve gotten to Stanford for my doctorate, and so I chose that, and it turned out to be a marvelous choice, because it had just about every kind of ancient rock in Colorado, and that way I got familiar with everything. And then the USGS hired me, so I had a symbiotic thing with them and the camps. I continued to live there in the summers, while I was doing USGS mapping and while set while Sherry was on the high trail staff. And by that time, I was at Williams as a professor. So a three way symbiosis, really. So I stayed on for a long, long time. Both of my sons were campers and counselors. And by that time I joined the board, I was one of the original board members that Sandy appointed, and I was on the board for 25 years. I just stepped down a couple of years ago when it was hard to get there because of my ailing foot, so I couldn’t get to meetings very easily. So 25 years on the board, and during that time, a lot of important changes were made. For one thing, we started asking people for money. Sandy would never do that. And we all told him, as he was putting all this together, we said, “Sandy, we’re going to go for it,” you know? And he said, “Well, do what you have to do.” And of course, it’s really, really saved the place, and let it, let it burgeon. So it’s been a long and continuous history, and I’m still in touch with gazillions of people out there. And over the years, I think I’ve sent maybe 20 Williams people out as staff members at the camps and at High Trails Outdoor Ed and you and Nell Davis, who was at the place full time for two or three years. So it’s a continuing relationship. Certainly in the beginning the biggest thing in my life. And the other wonderful connection I was able to make was when the nature place opened, I realized that this was a way to combine Williams and Sanborn, which is one of my goals, other than just sending people back and forth. So at that time, we started the Williams alumni college in the Rockies in 1981 for weeks of field trips or through my favorite country that I would take alumni on each day, we’d go a different direction. And we did that for also 25 years, and had over 400 participants from the alumni from all over the country. It was a wonderful experience. It turned out that was the very first alumni travel offering that Williams provided. And now they’re all over the world, of course, but that was another wonderful relationship between the college and the camps. So anyway, that brings us pretty much up to the present, not a short answer. 

Mike

I mean, to have that much of a story is truly remarkable only shows the depth of care and compassion and connection that the space offered you, Going a little off script here. I never had the opportunity to interact with Sandy. Could you talk a little bit about Sandy’s role and kind of your interactions with him throughout the time when he was running everything?

Bud

Well, he was truly a larger than life figure, and without a question, the finest educator I ever encountered in three or four different universities, bachelor’s, master’s, PhD, wonderful schools, but never did I meet as charismatic a teacher as Sandy, and he wasn’t trying to teach. We just followed him, and he led in sort of unusual ways. Sometimes he was as much of a kid as he was a leader, sometimes, and we followed him into some remarkable situations. That could be another old story, but he was the inspiration of the place. Obviously, he and Laura and you can get that full story someday when you interview Jerry and Jane. But without him, I probably wouldn’t have been as hooked on the place. I might not have even gone the first summer as a camper. So he was, he was the inspiration, as I say, larger than life figure,just remarkable,

Mike

And so what kind of drew you? You got to see Sandy, you got to see his video. What, from those, initial interactions drew you to head on out there?

Bud

Well, the MO, the movies were crude to begin with. You know, eight millimeters, kind of flickering on and off, but they showed a lot of pretty mountain pictures. And as I say, by the end of that summer, I really had fallen in love with the mountains, with the place, even though I wasn’t able to get back there until I was old enough to be a counselor. And so I guess it was, it was the location as well as his person. Really that was the combination hook.

Mike

So property and your experience at Sanborn kind of allowed you to fall in love with the mountains. Do you have a favorite spot on property? 

Bud

Yeah, I would say they’re two top of the world, which I imagine a lot of people absolutely love. 

Mike

Top of the world; I led so many High Trails hikes up there.

Bud

Well, unfortunately, it’s not part of the ranch, but it’s a place that a lot of people make a pilgrimage to. And of course, it’s part of the Big Flat and one of the inspirations for that book that I wrote. The other [favorite] places is, I don’t know what they call it now, Valley High, if that’s still a name of a camp, used to have a teepee in it, it’s on the way from the girls Sunday rocks go around some bluffs and into a beautiful valley that has a spring. We used to have a spring coming out from a big boulder of granite and high trails used to put a teepee there for girls overnight spot. Valley High. It had another name, Hidden Valley?

Mike

Hidden Valley. Yep, Hidden Valley is still a place. 

Bud

Those two places are very different. Hidden Valley is very closed in and beautifully vegetated, and Top of the World is just the opposite. And I guess you’d have to add in some Sunday rocks, which we weren’t sure was going to survive as a sacred place when they built High Trails. But somehow the girls keep it down when we’re out there.

Mike

So it sounds like there’s a lot of really special spots out there, which is a nice reference to HTOEC. But let’s kind of expand out a little bit. Can you talk a little bit more about your career and kind of how you have been engaged? So you went to Washington and went to Stanford, started working at Williams. Can you share a little bit about that career trajectory and how you’ve still continued to be involved in COEC.

Bud

Well, as I say, I got started in geology, which has been my life, and I taught here [at Williams] for 55 years before retiring three years ago, I guess. And during all that time, I was associated with Colorado, either through the camps or through the USGS or a combination of them, and then eventually we started the alumni trips as well. So my profession is also my avocation. Geology is more than just classroom teaching. In fact, it only begins in the classroom, and if you don’t get students out into the real world, it’s not geology, as far as I’m concerned. So yeah, the field, the field aspect, and of course, focused on Colorado. I’ve worked other places. I worked several summers on the Maine coast with the granites up there along that rocky shoreline, and did a little lot of teaching reconnoitering in New Hampshire, which is the Granite State. My middle name is Granite, by the way, and so I have been a little active in New England, but I really never considered that my my geological home, it’s always been Colorado, and to a certain extent, northern New Mexico, because some of the USGS were slopped over into into northern New Mexico.

Mike 

Thinking about the present time, what is something that brings you joys these days, and why?

Bud

Well, as I mentioned a minute ago, I come into the office almost every morning as a retired emeritus professor and immediately get to work on writing about Colorado geology, because that transposes me back to the mountains, and I can’t get there very easily anymore. I have this foot that makes travel and walking very difficult now, but I can immediately go back to places that are so familiar. I can remember almost every footstep and every turn in the gravel road through all of that country that I spent so much time in, and that that really is the most joyful thing of my post-retirement years is going backwards.

Mike

Sounds like you still have a lot of really great connections with that place, and from a personal perspective, as someone who continues to do this outdoor education work, that hands-on, tactile learning, is something that deeply resonates with all of us as COEC, but also me personally. Your class was the first geology class I took at Williams, Geos 102, An Unfinished Planet and the lab portions of it were my favorite part. just the excuse to go outside and be hands on and learn to teach too. It really just gets you into that headspace of learning and being together as both students and also, just like the connection with the planet, and that, I think, is some of the most vital aspects to what happens at COEC, very broadly. So on a personal level, I want to say thank you for kind of teeing up my trajectory into that. Because GEOS 102, has really been what started my whole path. And it just is truly remarkable, that sense of connection and responsibility that you have with COEC and we all have very much appreciated everything that you have done for us over your entire career and continue to do even remotely. What did you enjoy most about your experience, whether that’s on the board as a camper, as a staff member, what was like some of your highlights,

Bud

hard to draw the line. It’s only a camper for four weeks. Yeah, they were great. But I don’t remember that much, I guess. And the years as a counselor, so many great, great friends from the staff, especially that I remember, and some of the campers I had, I’m still in touch. Well, Chris Shears, who’s done some architectural work at the camp, is a big architect up in Boulder. We’re still in touch. I had him as a camper for more than one year, I think, and a number of others who were campers from the 1960s I guess we’re still in touch. And a number of the staff members. Phil McKnight, especially, who I wish was somebody you could interview. He’s in Lawrence, Kansas, but he was a tremendous influence on the Big Spring part of the program, way back and it was actually he and his wife introduced me to my wife from Kansas University. And then the board members I’m still in touch with, with several of those, not necessarily about board issues, but just because we’re close. So it’s hard to say which is my favorite.

Mike

Yeah. I mean, you don’t have to have just one. Yeah, and Kathy is the one that told you about the Gandalf appearance, which is really fun.

Bud

Thanks for the pictures!

Mike

Oh, of course, always happy to share some really fun experiences that happen out there. So that’s it for any of the formal questions that I have. Is there any kind of last thing you’d like to share?

Bud

Well, I’m just glad that I mentioned GEOS 102; that was my favorite course to teach, even though it wasn’t my specialty, necessarily, there was a lot of mineralogy and petrology in it, but it was basically an introduction to the planet. And we always thought, I think those of us who taught introductory courses in the department, and we offered five or six different ones, that we were trolling for geology majors, because that’s the way we got them, hook them in one of the introductory courses. And I’m glad we hooked you and a number of others over the years. That was always my degree of success was how many students went on, if not as geologists, at least maybe as majors here. And as I say, I’m in touch with an awful lot of those, even in many, many fields. So that’s sort of an afterthought, I guess.

Mike

The class of 2017 was one of the largest classes!

Bud

You had one of the best 

Mike

Happy we were to be one of those big ones. Absolutely Cool. Well, thank you so much for your time, bud. Really appreciate getting to chat with you!