Philip Prince

A native of Greer, South Carolina, Philip Prince enjoyed a view of the distant Blue Ridge Escarpment every clear morning on his drive to Riverside High School. After studying Earth and Environmental Sciences (with a good dose of chemistry) at Furman University, he worked in environmental consulting at The Fletcher Group (now SynTerra) from 2004 to 2006. Following a brisk thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail between April and July 2006, he entered a doctoral program in Geosciences at Virginia Tech and focused his research on the evolution of the Escarpment zone from northeast Georgia to Virginia. After defending his dissertation in 2011, he remained at Virginia Tech as a teaching faculty and researcher until 2016. For the last 4 years, Prince has worked primarily in geologic mapping in the Appalachian Mountains and continues his work on the Escarpment through academic research and landslide mapping. An avid whitewater paddler, he can often be found contemplating Appalachian Geology in the Green River Narrows.