Mary C. Henry

Is it ever appropriate for someone to yell at someone else in an academic faculty meeting? I would say no. Especially so if you’re a higher rank than the person you’re yelling at. Especially not during a brainstorming session on a Friday afternoon. Especially not if you’re a man and you’re yelling at a woman. I just had another taste of how people at work don't value me or my opinions. The comment I made was clearly not going to be a major focus of what we were doing, but I thought I had a valid point and should be allowed to make it. If no one felt it was worth pursuing or discussing further, that’s fine. However, my comment was met with anger and aggression from one colleague. Nobody else said anything. I felt uncomfortable for being yelled at so I left the meeting right then. One (female) colleague emailed later to ask if I was okay. Another (female colleague) did on Sunday. The person who yelled emailed to apologize, but apology also pointed out that I was wrong. So that’s ...

Late last fall, I joined the steering committee for the Ohio Geographic Alliance (OGA). A retired colleague (Professor Emeritus Dr. Howell Lloyd) was stepping down after many years serving on the committee. We attended my first meeting together and I was thankful to have someone at the meeting who I already knew and also someone to help me navigate to Ohio State University for the first time (where OGA is based). OGA is one of many state geographic alliances and is sponsored by the National Geographic Society . Established in 1990, OGA is an organization devoted to enhancing geography, as both a physical and socialc science, in Ohio's K-12 curriculum. It is a partnership that includes K-12 teachers and university geography professors who work together in pre-service, inservice, materials development and public engagement activities. (from OGA website ). I was very excited about the prospect of joining this organization, because I have wanted to get involved in K-12 education and ...

So academics have their summers off, right? We may not be teaching (although plenty of us teach at least some summers), but we have plenty of other things going on. Here's what I have on my plate this week: Meeting with my REU student to go over more preprocessing steps. We have five Landsat images to process and analyze and are just getting into the preprocessing now. It can be very tedious and requires great attention to detail. Attending a MA proposal defense. Graduate students have to have committee approval of their proposed thesis work before their travel funding is released. Most students finish this in April and May, but some are still working to plan their field visits in what remains of the summer. Attending a REU cluster meeting. We are going to be discussing articles from two visiting speakers. I still need to read the papers and they are on topics quite outside of my discipline and area of expertise. Reading like this is usually best done near a computer so that I can ...