William J. Fritz

In his first eleven years, Bill Fritz lived in a rough log homesteaders’ cabin on the banks of the Yaak River in the remote Yaak Valley on the western Montana-Canadian border, the last area of the US to be settled under the Homestead Act. The next nine years he spent in rural western Puerto Rico as part of a Seventh-day Adventist missionary hospital community. Bill received his high school diploma from Colegio Antilleano as William Jon Fritz-Peterson. He went on to earn a BS and MS in Biology from Walla Walla College and a PhD in Geology from the University of Montana. Bill is accomplished in geology, academia, cooking, diving, aviation, farming, and construction and has dabbled in radio since grade school. He is a licensed Amateur Extra ham operator, originally WP4DFU and now KQ4CAD. Many of these pursuits he shares with his son and grandchildren. In addition to sustenance farming on a cattle ranch in Montana, serving as dive master on a research vessel in the Caribbean, working his way through college in construction, flying his plane throughout North America from Puerto Rico to Fairbanks, Alaska, as a commercial rated pilot, and working as a cattle breeder to preserve the Pineywoods, an endangered landrace heritage breed, Bill is an internationally renowned field geologist and university administrator, who served as president of the College of Staten Island in The City University of New York for nine years. Previously, he served for many years at Georgia State University both as a professor of geology and as a senior administrator overseeing enrollment management and academic programs with a focus on student success. Bill has been a tireless advocate for making people aware of natural disasters, especially from flooding around active volcanoes and coastal storms. While on Staten Island, he worked to make New Yorkers aware of rising sea level and the dangers of natural disasters such as storm surges, most recently researching and presenting professionally on Superstorm Sandy of 2012. The tragic loss of life on Staten Island resulted from residents not being aware of where high ground was located and the reaction to shelter in basements then overrun by the surge. He, along with a team from the College of Staten Island, advocated for "Go to High Ground" in the face of a surge. A Fellow of the Geological Society of America, Bill has published extensively on both modern and ancient explosive volcanoes, notably in Yellowstone, Wales, and Colombia, where he was a member of an international team assessing the aftermath of a volcanic eruption that killed over thirty thousand people. He is an expert on the geology of Yellowstone National Park and southwestern Montana. His works include two textbooks, the popular Roadside Geology of Yellowstone Country, and a book chapter on Superstorm Sandy. His scholarship has been featured in the media including significant mention in a feature article, "The Toll," in The New Yorker. Other interviews and quotes have appeared in: The New York Times, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Newsday, the Huffington Post, Our Amazing Planet, and the Staten Island Advance, as well as radio interviews by NPR and TV appearances on WABC-TV's The Diana Williams Show, ABC Spreecast, The Weather Channel, NY1, CUNY TV Study with the Best, and Staten Island Cable Television. Bill was the keynote speaker at the Crain’s New York Business meeting on rebuilding after Superstorm Sandy.