Welcome to my eFolio site. I am an instructor of Human, Physical, and Regional Geography as awell as Global Studies at Century College.
2009-10: I am starting my 9th! year at Century College. My primary goal this year to get my courses on D2L. I've been dragging my feet here. We have two new adjuncts joining us this fall - Tyler Mckay and Danielle Meinhardt - as we say goodbye and best wishes to Shannon Trego, who has taken a tenure track position at St. Paul College. Tyler will be teaching our new and now running GIS course. Jeff Knapp will continue to teach Minnesota Geography as well as other classes and leading a summer field methods course in the Black Hills. 2008-9: I enjoyed a very rewarding year. Highlights: - Teaching an honors section of global studies in the fall. I worked with a very enthusiastic and bright group of 13 students.
- Teaching a small and fun Saturday morning class where we were able to go out and play in the soil (not dirt!).
- Incorporating small group sections into physical geography. In this format I meet with the students once a week in small groups. I have been able to work more closely with the students and incorporate computer-based lab exercises.
- This summer I will incorporate some history of the physcial sciences exercises into this class based on the book "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bryson.
In 2007 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
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| Sleeping Bear Dunes, MI |
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.
One of my great interests here at Century is a faculty initiative called "Teaching Circles", run through theCenter 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. | 
