During my PhD, I had the opportunity to gain teaching experience in multiple types of classroom settings, not only typical lectures but also laboratory-based classes, field-based classes and online courses. My hope for any one of my students at the end of one of my courses is to leave with a fundamental understanding of geologic time and consequently, the exceedingly rapid rate of anthropogenic climate change compared to that of the rate of climate change in the geologic past. I hope to bridge the gap across courses and make the connections for students between math, science and issues facing society today.
Learning about Earth's past climate helps with teaching basic math, physics, chemistry and biology concepts. It also teaches students how Earth's modern climate functions around them on the daily, weekly, monthly, annual, decadal, centennial and geologic time scales. It allows students to understand climate sensitivity, and how changes to Earth's climate in the past can be used to understand how humans are affecting our climate moving forward. Paleoclimate involves so many disciplines that it can be used in almost any course from statistics to oceanography, to chemistry to evolutionary biology to public policy.
In teaching climate science concepts at the high school level, my main priority is to teach the underlying simple concepts governing the change that we see on Earth today, and how we know what we know about the context of Earth's past climate. I get excited about making basic science concepts more interesting and accessible through Earth and atmospheric science concepts and examples. One of my biggest interests at the secondary level is to include interdisciplinary aspects, connecting the humanities with the sciences, drawing upon my Bachelor's degrees in both the arts and the sciences.
Teaching experience in undergraduate courses:
Introduction to Field Geology (GEO 295)
Global Change and Earth Science (GEO 308)
Glacial Geology (GEO 481)
Stratigraphy and Sedimentology (GEO 370).
Teaching Experience in graduate courses:
Glacial Geology (GEO 581)
Courses I am developing:
A closer look at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR5 Report
High Latitude Climate Change
Useful Links:
Interactive simulations on glaciers, blackbodies, greenhouse effect, Milankovitch
at PhET Interactive Simulations
Free open source GIS software for Mac OS at QGIS
Paleoclimate Searchable Data Repository
The Stable Isotope Chapter of White's Geochemistry Textbook available open source
Learning about Earth's past climate helps with teaching basic math, physics, chemistry and biology concepts. It also teaches students how Earth's modern climate functions around them on the daily, weekly, monthly, annual, decadal, centennial and geologic time scales. It allows students to understand climate sensitivity, and how changes to Earth's climate in the past can be used to understand how humans are affecting our climate moving forward. Paleoclimate involves so many disciplines that it can be used in almost any course from statistics to oceanography, to chemistry to evolutionary biology to public policy.
In teaching climate science concepts at the high school level, my main priority is to teach the underlying simple concepts governing the change that we see on Earth today, and how we know what we know about the context of Earth's past climate. I get excited about making basic science concepts more interesting and accessible through Earth and atmospheric science concepts and examples. One of my biggest interests at the secondary level is to include interdisciplinary aspects, connecting the humanities with the sciences, drawing upon my Bachelor's degrees in both the arts and the sciences.
Teaching experience in undergraduate courses:
Introduction to Field Geology (GEO 295)
Global Change and Earth Science (GEO 308)
Glacial Geology (GEO 481)
Stratigraphy and Sedimentology (GEO 370).
Teaching Experience in graduate courses:
Glacial Geology (GEO 581)
Courses I am developing:
A closer look at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR5 Report
High Latitude Climate Change
Useful Links:
Interactive simulations on glaciers, blackbodies, greenhouse effect, Milankovitch
at PhET Interactive Simulations
Free open source GIS software for Mac OS at QGIS
Paleoclimate Searchable Data Repository
The Stable Isotope Chapter of White's Geochemistry Textbook available open source
