October already?

By -
We're creeping closer to the halfway point of the semester and things are getting busy for me. My teaching load ended up being lighter than planned this semester, since one of my classes was canceled. However, I am busy with some research work right now. I have a paper revision due on October 8th, so I've been working on that the last few weeks- a little at a time. I am also working on a new proposal to the Ohio Board of Regents Improving Teacher Quality Program. We are hoping to partner with some local schools to develop some new approaches for teaching science and math. I have never applied to this program before, and it's been hectic trying to coordinate with colleagues and set up meetings with K12 teachers. I am very excited about the project, though- I hope we get funding!! Proposals are due October 27th. Yikes!

The canceled class has made things easier on me for all the other things I am working on, but I am still feeling stressed. Proposal-writing is tough work and I haven't written one in a while. I keep trying to tell myself that we still have plenty of time, but I know it will fly... I'll have to post again about my classes and other things I've been thinking about. I'll try not to wait so long next time!


*Miami is cracking down on low enrollment courses, because they feel it isn't a good use of faculty resources- instead I will be adding a 2-credit seminar next semester to get in my full teaching load. I didn't get enough students in the class this semester because of a schedule change in another department that resulted in a scheduling conflict (that I was not aware of until August).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Back to classes with almost no concern for COVID

By -
Image
Photo by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash   Classes start next Monday and I will be there with my KN95 mask on. I might be the only one since Miami University is not requiring masks despite CDC recommendations for our county being to the contrary. I can't see how this will go well. People are still being hospitalized and dying of COVID. Why should we pretend otherwise? I had hoped they would start with masks with all the students returning to campus, but that is not the case. It's very frustrating. I am not immune compromised, but I'm sure there are those on campus on who are. This policy just seems very misguided. I watched the webinar posted on the U website and that was even more worrying to me. It sounds like they want to rely 100% on personal responsibility for keeping COVID numbers down. Yes, there are people who will be careful, but not everyone!  So that's how I'm feeling a week out from classes. I do get to teach Landscape Ecology again- it's only
Read more

Teaching with Documentaries

By -
As I prepare for fall classes, I am having my annual dilemma over content I want to share with my students. This semester I'm teaching two classes that I've taught before: 1) Global Perspectives on Natural Disasters and 2) Global Change (I'm team-teaching the second one). In both classes, I use a textbook but also assign additional readings and show short and long documentaries during class.  I like to think of the videos as multimedia reading assignments that give students something to think about and discuss. But just like articles and books, I can only show the same documentaries for a while until they become outdated. So each time I have to decide if it's time to retire that favorite video or show it one more time. A great example is The Trouble with Malaria . It's an episode of the CBC series " The Nature of Things " and gives an excellent overview of the disease and struggles to fight it. But it was made 20 years ago! I've been showing it in GE
Read more

Summer Plans

By -
We've reached the halfway point of the summer here at Miami (we start classes on August 24th), so it seems like a good time to take stock of what I've accomplished and what I still plan to do this summer. Progress Most of my work this summer has focused on REU and with the help of my student, we have made some good progress on a project. After some debate, I decided to stick with using some methodology that we've already used in this research, but apply it to different data. Most of the work done so far on this project (and the pilot study before the grant) focused on using fall imagery to detect Amur honeysuckle in forested areas. This shrub expands its leaves earlier in spring and retains them later in fall than the overstory tree species, and thus far, we have used fall imagery in our analysis (we felt that too many other plants were also green in spring). Recently, I started to reconsider this approach and tested some spring images for a conference presentation this spr
Read more