Mid-Summer Check In

By -
Is it really the middle the summer of already?? Well, by official seasons it isn't since we only had the June Solstice nine days ago, but Miami had graduation on Mother's Day weekend (May 11-12), which was seven weeks ago. We start classes again in eight weeks, so we're just about half way through summer break. This year is a little longer because of the calendar change happening next year- we are adding a winter term during January and shortening each semester by a week or two. We start classes about a week later in August than we have been and finish about a week later in May (hooray for no more final exam grading on Mother's Day!!!) That means this summer probably has an extra week (with the early spring graduation + late fall start date). Wow, that makes me feel better, actually! I've fallen deep into my usual summer wanderings, feeling like I have no focus- especially since I spent the last two weeks around downtown Cincinnati while my daughter did a theater camp at the Aronoff Center. It was fun- like a mini-vacation since I visited Eden Park, Over-the-Rhine, Findlay Market, Cincinnati Art Museum, Krohn Conservatory, walked across the Roebling Suspension Bridge, ran errands in Hyde Park and Kenwood. We ate lunch out every day after she got out of camp. I'm a little sad to be back in Oxford full time, although it was a lot of driving!
Some of the pictures I took of the Roebling Suspension Bridge. It connects Cincinnati, Ohio with Covington, Kentucky across the Ohio River. When it opened in 1866, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world!

I'll have to set up a schedule for myself this week to get back into work-mode. I do feel better knowing I have so much time left, though! I have a few reviews to do and an article to read for an upcoming meeting, research to finish for a fall conference, and some prep for fall classes. My husband is still out of the country doing field work, but he'll be home in less than three weeks!

I've grown weary of Facebook for many reasons, but still love social media, so I've joined a few new sites. I'm also on LinkedIn, but don't use it very much.

What social media sites do you use for work- or teaching-related things? 

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