In the middle of environmental science Prof. Jim Galloway's office, two gourds sit on top of the table.
"Would you like one?" he asked. "We've got lots."
Galloway and his wife are avid gardeners, and he admitted that he tells his students the latest tales from his gardening adventures.
"They know that I hate groundhogs -- it's one of the themes of my class," Galloway said with a laugh. "My wife Nancy and I like to grow all sorts of things, and groundhogs are the bane of my existence."
But his stories are not totally off-topic -- they tie in quite nicely with the class that he has been teaching at the University for over 10 years, Resources and the Environment.
"The students, as years have gone by, have gotten more and more appreciative about learning this concept of how we use our resources," Galloway said. "I love to grow vegetables. ... I think everyone likes to be outside, using nature in a sustainable fashion to make a resource, food, that you need."
Galloway, who concentrates on environmental chemistry, first became interested in the field as a graduate student in California in the late 1960s. He had graduated from Whittier College in southern California and went on to the University of California in San Diego to get his Ph.D.
"I was walking along the beach one day and I discovered this old, rusty anchor chain," Galloway said. "I got to thinking, where did the chemicals come from that made that anchor chain? And now that it's dissolving, where are they going and to what degree does that have an impact on the environment?"
This newfound interest led Galloway to switch over to studying environmental chemistry for his degree. But in 1972, after receiving his Ph.D., Galloway said he just decided to stop being a scientist.
"I had been at school since kindergarten, and I was really tired of school and science," he said.
Galloway and his wife then moved to Lexington, Va., where they and another couple opened a natural food store, selling soy beans to the locals. Unfortunately, soy beans were not very popular there, according to Galloway, and their business went bankrupt in about six months.
In order to make a living, Galloway and his wife, both potters, gave pottery lessons and sold clay pots out of their studio, among other related projects, to get by for about a year and a half.
"Then one day, out of the blue, I got a letter from a professor at Cornell University," Galloway said. "He understood that I left science, but he needed a chemist to work on this thing called acid rain."
The professor offered Galloway a job working with him, so Galloway and his wife decided to give it a try and moved to Cornell University. They were there for a couple of years when a job became available at the University.
"We knew Charlottesville because we would come over the mountain to get plaster for our studio and supplies," Galloway said. "We loved Charlottesville, so I applied and got the job in 1976 and we've been here ever since."
Next year will mark 30 years that Galloway has been teaching at the University.
Galloway's two children have since graduated from college, his son Joshua from the University in May 2004. The chicken that adorned his son's graduation cap as a joke still sits on top of Galloway's bookcase in his office.
"Charlottesville has been wonderful to us," Galloway said. "It's an intellectually challenging environment to be in and as long as it stays [that way], I can't see that we would consider leaving"
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