Welcome to my eFolio site. I am an instructor of Human, Physical, and Regional Geography at Century College.
Fall 2007: I am returning after a very rewarding year-long sabbatical in which I took graduate courses through the geography department at the University of Minnesota. My studies focused mainly on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and climatology. In the climatology course we examined the scientific basis of climate change. I also took a class examining immigration in Europe. Europe, like the U.S., has high rates of immigration from less developed countries.
As a result of my sabbatical endeavors, a Fundamentals of GIS course has been developed and will be offered during the upcoming spring semester. GIS is a rapidly growing information technology field, and since 80% of all data bases have a "spatial" component (e.g. locations attached to the data), it is pertinent in many fields. In a nutshell, GIS is the use of computers, satellite technologies, GPS, etc... in spatial analysis and mapping.
In addition I have developed a new set of physical geography exercises in which students will use Excel spreadsheets to learn about climate data. One of my great interests here at Century is a faculty initiative called "Teaching Circles", run through theCenter
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| Sleeping Bear Dunes, MI |
for Teaching and Learning (CTL). I've been involved in ten circles, both as participant and facilitator. Please visit the CTL link for more information on Teaching Circles. I am also involved in the Global Education committee here at the college, coordinating assessment activities for geography, and running the annual student "Where in the World" Geography Contest. If you're a student at Century College, be sure to watch for announcements for this year's contest. Please visit my link to the contest - it features information about the contest, examples of questions from previous years' contests, and the "geography hall of fame". Along the lines of professional activities in my discipline, I've gotten interested in the environmental history of and issues surrounding Battle Creek, a local stream in St. Paul close to where I grew up and not far from where I now live. I presented a poster of this research at the 2004 meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG), a professional organization of academic geographers of which I am a member. Visit my "research" link to read an abstract of the research. For more information about my courses and teaching strategies, please visit my "teaching" link. All photos by author. |
