Scott Sinnock
880 Veridian Way
Cary, IL, 60013
ssinnock@mc.net
This short biography is intended for use by the search committee of McHenry County Community College. It is written in the first person, because I feel somewhat pretentious writing about myself in the third person.
I am an Illinois native, born in Evanston, but raised in Indiana. My formative years were spent on an 80 acre farm outside a small rural community in east-central Indiana, Mt. Summit, the highest railroad point in Indiana, hence the name. In this country environment I learned to love nature and became fascinated with natural processes. Our farm had about 30 acres of nearly pristine forest where I spent many hours exploring and learning about the great variety of hardwood trees, birds, mammals, and other natural facets of the great midwestern forests. I carry this fascination with nature with me to this day, and still look forward to opportunities to get away from the city and into more natural settings.
I attended high school in the local county seat, New Castle, Indiana, where I was active in sports (basketball, tennis, and pole vaulting), debate, the school newspaper, and academics. I graduated as valedictorian of a class of about 650 and set off full of confidence for college at Davidson College near Charlotte, North Carolina. There I encountered 35 more high school valedictorians in a class of 250 freshman. Such heretofore unknown scholarly competition shocked me, and I stumbled academically. Leaving Davidson, I tried Ball State University in Indiana, the University of Utah, and another try at Davidson, before finally settling down at Indiana-Purdue University at Indianapolis. There I took my first geology class and immediately rediscovered the academic focus and dedication I lost during earlier college experiences. With newfound commitment I sailed through undergraduate and graduate degrees in geology. My graduate work led to master’s and PhD degrees from Purdue University.
During my academic years, I gained a broad and deep knowledge of geology, specializing in geomorphology, or as the British call it, physical geography. My master’s research involved computer and manual analysis of satellite multispectral scanner imagery, originally known as ERTS then LANDSAT, and finally EOS. I overlaid satellite spectral data with geologic, vegetation, and soils information to automate mapping of distinct surface landforms. In retrospect I see this created an early but crude GIS, before the term and technology caught on. My PhD thesis was interpretation of the Quaternary history of the Uncompahgre Plateau and Grand Valley of western Colorado. I mapped landforms of the region and conjectured about how glaciers and meltwater rivers shaped a diverse and complex landscape that includes Black Canyon National Park and Colorado National Monument.
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After graduate school, I accepted employment with Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. There I worked for ten years as a staff scientist and then department manager on the commercial nuclear waste disposal program at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. I authored the site selection study for Yucca Mountain and the first performance assessments of potential radionuclide migration and groundwater travel times from the site to regulatory compliance boundaries. I also oversaw development of a database of the site’s geologic and engineering properties, as well as development of a three dimensional model of the site geology and surface features. This model was another early GIS, again before the term became widely known. While with Sandia, I moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, to be closer to the potential Yucca Mountain repository site and the Department of Energy project managers. Later I transferred to TRW Inc. as chief science advisor to the project manager of TRW, which had just won the overal l Management and Operations contract for the project from the Department of Energy. After conducting several “value of information” studies with nationally famous decision-analyst consultants from Stanford and MIT, I (and the consultants) concluded that further study of the site was not cost effective: decisions based on available information were unlikely to change as a result of further information because the current large uncertainties were unlikely to be reduced by more data or study. This conclusion did not support the Department of Energy’s or TRW’s policy that significantly increased budgets were required for extensive and expensive additional study of the site. As chief scientist, my job was to lobby for the additional resources, a job I could not perform in good conscience. So after 17 years on the Yucca Mountain Project I was fired.
At that time, 1996, I used my savings to start an Internet Service Provider company, XTS.NET, in Las Vegas, Nevada. This new career direction greatly expanded my knowledge of the Internet and telecommunications industries. I acted as network engineer and company CEO, and had to refresh all my programming skills to manage customer accounts and office functions. The company grew for four years until the great Internet crash of late 1999. Loss of customers to the telecommunications giants, Sprint and World Com, reduced revenues below costs, and the business failed. Despite the business failure, that ISP experience was one of the wildest most exciting rides I have ever been on.
Without a job or house (lost in the company financial meltdown), I moved to Illinois to live with my sister. Here I started teaching as an Adjunct Professor at National Louis University in Chicago and Evanston. I also joined the staff of Harrington Institute of Interior Design in Chicago as an Adjunct Professor of Science. During the past 3 years I have taught Physical Geology, Physical Science, and Physics courses to more than 200 students. I find teaching to be the most rewarding job I have done to date, and I continue to teach at those two institutions at the current time.
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