I was honored to be elected as Department Chair for the Physical Science Department in Spring 2024.
I offer a co-enrolled Honors section in my lecture courses. The students are required to complete all the same requirements for the course as are the other students in the course, but the honors students have additional requirements they must fulfill to obtain honors credit. The assignments are meant to broaden their udnerstanding of geology. One half of their additional requirements comes from some sort of generalized "service learning." Although some of the options the students are given are not service learning as defined by a full-scale service learning community, the results provide materials or experiences that can be utilized by others to learn geology.
One of the most rewarding and fun things I've been able to do - both with my honors students and on my own or with our amazing lab technicians - is to do community and K-12 outreach. In the past, we have visited Cotton Boll Elementary & Copperwood Elementary (with the benefit that my son went there) and worked both with individual classes and at their "Science Night" events. Some of the presentations/ programs were directly produced by Honors Students and are continuing to be used years after the project was produced. We have also provided materials for K-12 teachers to help them develop more robust earth science exercises for their courses. Honors students are encouraged to take part of these K-12 outreach events as well as the community outreach events listed below. Honors students are also encouraged to reach out to their own previous K-12 instructors or those of family members to see what help they need in developing course materials - even if it's not in geology - so that we can help our K-12 teachers be successful in a very challenging education environment. We are all looking forward to a time when we can be invited back into the classrooms of our K-12 students.
Since I joined the faculty in 1997, I have been involved in several department "open houses" including SciTech Festivals wherein we deliver short educational presentations within our specialties aimed at various audiences including "home-school" parents, teachers, and K-12 students (see Service Learning above). These presentations range from fully prepared mini-courses to impromptu and informal question and answer sessions. In addition, we often serve as the community "clearinghouse" of geological information ranging from simple questions of rock and mineral identification to more complicated geologic issues involving real estate or other community concerns.
GCC has a limited number of geology majors that come through our program. We feel it is important to support and encourage them in any way(s) possible. As such, I began maintaining a list of students who self-identified as geology majors. I usually send out around 10 emails a semester that advertise specialized talks or professional programs and courses available to 2-year students. Some of our students have accepted internships from initial invites from the listserve that eventually led them to jobs in the career! We've broadened the listserve to include majors in geoscience, earth & planetary science, environmental science & earth sciences in general. We have recently partnered with geography to get their students involved in promotion of the geosciences as well.
In 2019 I began working with the department to identify funding for and the availability of current geology majors that would be suitable to serve as tutors to our large community of geology students. We were successful in setting up a valuable system that allowed our majors further depth into their subject and gave students some more "user friendly" peer assistance. This program continues in various ways today given the changes necessitated by more online courses that began with COVID-19 conditions.
When I first arrived a GCC, the previous instructor had left 102/104 with little to no support materials. The interim instructor had begun the process of deveoloping lectures, but the lab manual had to be created and merged with in-house and available learning materials and support structure. I began the process of putting together a Historical Geology lab manual when I began at GCC as an adjunct in 1997 and the manual and supporting lecture materials have continued to be refined since that time. I am still the only instructor that teaches this course at GCC.
Upon the retirement of the lead for GLG110/111 in Fall 2021, I began teaching and revising the curriculum for GLG110 & GLG111, teaching these two courses for the first time in Fall 2022.
This position usually rotates in two year terms. I have served as this chairperson during 3 rotations. Duties include the hiring, local management, and evaluation of adjunct faculty for evening and weekend classes.
Faculty Co-Chair, Staffing Committee for Laboratory Technician, Spring 2016
This committee is charged with the difficult task of determining the best candidate to serve as our laboratory technician.
Committee Member, Staffing Committee for Astronomy Faculty
This committee is charged with the difficult task of determining the best candidate to join our department as a new residential faculty