I like to keep things lively and hands-on, so I love to take my students outside. In many lecture courses that is not always possible, so we rely on the labs to get students’ hands dirty. That’s when I get jealous of our lab coordinator who gets to take our students to measure dinosaur tracks, collect invertebrates in nearby streams, or map the rocks on Trinity’s beautiful campus.
In upper-level courses that do not have a lab I try to take my students into the field as much as possible. In my soil science class I take my students into the field digging soil pits and analyzing soil profiles. In my first-year seminar we spent Trinity Days in New Hampshire photographing the White Mountains in beautiful fall colors. Every year we are taking students on a fieldtrip. Last year we went to Utah, the year before we froze our butts off in Iceland. Who knows where we will go next.
In the past years I have taught
- Algebra and calculus-based introductory physics (PHYS 101, 102, 131, 231)
- An introductory course on climatology (ENVS 110)
- Introductions to Earth science (ENVS 112L) and environmental science (ENVS 149)
- A course on Earth systems science (ENVS 204)
- Soil Science (ENVS 305)
- First-year seminars on landscape photography (FYSM 167
To check out what I am teaching these days click here.