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I
feel a profound delight in, love for, reverence
for the natural world. My parents gave me this gift of
passion and my goal is to pass it on to as many minds as I
possibly can. I believe that caring involves deep
familiarity and understanding. Thus, my job as a geoscience
educator is to help as many students as possible to know and
understand and respect our planet, i.e., to help them really
care about it and act on their caring. In lecture, I used to
think I wasn't a good scientist if I admitted my passion. No
more. In the last few years I have adopted a style of
expressing my delight along with sharing why I'm delighted -
the intricate order and sense (and, sometimes, irony) of how
things work - wonderful!
In lower division lectures I present and
explore the most beautiful examples I can find for each
phenomenon - giant crystals, beautiful slide images, the
most pleasing map presentations, the most vivid
visualizations I can muster. Of course, I also insist that
they read and learn the basic material and I keep a running
feedback going to reinforce this: "question of the day" each
lecture, term papers, lab reports, tests. I also believe in
the crucial importance of personal, "hands on" experience
and have revamped the labs to be more fun and to include
more field experience. I have also co-run our lower division
field trips (Geology 18, 19) that are highlights for many
students (and for me as well - California is such a geologic
treasure trove). My goal with our non-major students is to
instill life-long curiosity and interest and caring for the
earth. I hope to get them to choose to read geological
articles in the paper, to choose nature programs over a sit
coms, to view earth problems as problems that are
interesting and vital, that deserve their attention.
In upper division and graduate classes, I
am primarily trying to help the students prepare for their
professional lives. I still include my passion (can't help
it) but it is only a reinforcement of a passion most of them
have already. My specialty, plate tectonics, is an excellent
vehicle for bringing together disparate information from
their other geo-classes and for constructing a broader
mental order - a world image. I also include many activities
in these classes that develop important skills: map
interpretation, literature searching, paper writing and
critiquing, cooperative learning, oral presentation.
I take my earth-love "crusade" to the
larger community whenever I can manage it. I regularly
present lecture-slide shows for many civic and school groups
(and often get invited back for more). In recent years I've
been concentrating on K-9 teachers in the belief that this
is the best way to reach the broader future citizenry. I
feel great respect for this hard working group of teachers
and I love their energy and fun and insight. It is a
pleasure to teach/empower them about earth subjects and to
help them figure out engaging ways to pass on their new
knowledge.
I feel a great respect for all the
students I deal with. They are our brightest, our future
leaders, and they are going to have to deal with a very
unstable and unpredictable world. I sympathize with their
ambivalence and cheer their initiatives and successes. I
respect their choices, including the choice by some to blow
off school, and I am as clear with them as possible about
the consequences, good and bad, of their various choices. I
go to some lengths to help students who are putting in the
effort to succeed and, also, to help students who are not
getting it together to be more realistic about their
activities and their options. I am an undergraduate faculty
advisor in our department and for many years have shared
(with a few other faculty) the task of individually
welcoming, programming and advising our majors. Some
students see me just once or twice, for their class lists,
but many others return regularly for advice and friendship
and help (and advocacy when needed). I really get a kick out
of watching individual students grow and find their powers
and acquire self confidence and clarity.
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