Category: Science Education

The Wildlands Will Recover

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Near the start of Winter Break, I was able to tag along on a walk-through of Crane Creek Regional Park, hosted by Hattie Brown of the Sonoma County Regional Parks, and John Parodi, with Point Blue Conservation Science. The primary reason for the trip was to discuss opportunities for students to get involved in fire recovery research, as parts of the park burned in the Nuns Fire last October. We did come up with some great ideas for student research, which I’ll talk more about during the Spring semester, when the research will be happening. For now, I thought I’d share some of my photos from that day.

The thing that struck me most is how undamaged most of the park appears. Already, the landscape is green, and there are very few obvious signs of the fire. As Hattie said while we were walking, “the wildlands will recover.”

Planting Graminoids!

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Yesterday and today, we achieved a big milestone in the Copeland Creek riparian restoration project: putting in some native plants! For this first phase of planting, we started out with grasses, rushes, and sedges (collectively known as “graminoids”), all of them planted near the spot we call Snowberry Corner.

The plants were cultivated here on campus, by the Native Plant Propagation class – they provided us with more plants than we were able to get into the ground! Here they are in the greenhouse, the day before our first planting day:

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Maker Space: 3D Printing

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Last October, a really spectacular space opened up on campus – we now have a dedicated Maker Space! Loads of equipment, including: vinyl cutter, embroidery machines, sublimation printer, oscilloscope, Arduino, soldering station, engraving machines, laser cutters, Carvey mill, and a virtual reality set up. Oh, and of course, we have 3D printers.

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Summer School – Day 14 and 15 – Ecosystem Services and Food Security

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The penultimate day of the summer term! Compared to some of our other days, this one was pretty low key, but we did have a little unexpected adventure.

I’d intended to lecture on ecosystem services in the morning, and then watch one of my favorite “teaching” films, “Hurricane on the Bayou.” And this is mostly what happened, except for a little detour part way through. When I arrived on campus, I noticed some flyers posted in the science building – one of the biology grad students, Vanessa Dodge, was giving her thesis defense. Not only was I really interested in her research, as I’d been up to the field site in Point Reyes a couple of times, but I also thought this would be a good way for my students to learn a bit more about the process of science. So, I gave them the choice – do you want to listen to me lecture all morning? Or do you want to go hear someone else talk for a while? They voted in favor of variety, so about an hour into the day we headed upstairs to the thesis defense.

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Sonoma State University hosts largest youth campus tour ever

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Here’s an article in the Press Democrat about the outreach I took part in last week at SSU:

Photo from Press Democrat

ELOÍSA RUANO GONZÁLEZ

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | July 13, 2017, 9:13PM

It was a campus takeover.

Hundreds of elementary and middle school children swarmed the cafeteria, dorms, quads and halls of Sonoma State University Thursday for what’s becoming an annual tradition.

It’s the second year the Rohnert Park campus has hosted “I Am the Future Day” for the Sacramento nonprofit Roberts Family Development Center, which provides academic and other services to hundreds of economically disadvantaged children and their families. The event is intended to give children a “taste of college” to encourage them to pursue higher education.

 

You can read the entire article here: http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/7185718-181/sonoma-state-gives-kids-taste?artslide=0

Summer School – Day 13 – Climate Change, Biomes and Food Webs

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We covered a lot of ground today. We started out with a lab activity, since we hadn’t had time to explore biomes fully the previous day. I started them out with a super cool Google Earth file that I found here. One of the resources is an interactive Google Earth map with layers that show various aspects of climate – average winter temperatures, average summer temperatures, that sort of thing – along with a layer that shows the location and distribution of biomes, worldwide.

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Summer School – Day 12 – Human Evolution, and Intro to Ecology

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Not a whole lot to post about this day . . . once again (as usual on exam days), I didn’t take any photos. Our morning was taken up with the third exam, including an exam review session. No Pictionary this time, though . . . instead, I put together a game of Jeopardy, using this awesome Powerpoint template.

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Summer School – Day 11 – Vertebrate Diversity

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Another favorite day! And another rotation lab. Today’s lectures focused on the diversity of vertebrates. We started out with chordates, and then followed the major groups all the way through their transition to land. In the morning, we covered fish, amphibians, and (some) reptilian vertebrates. Then, we stopped for some lab activities that allowed them to explore further the transition to land.

First, an activity from the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science, “A Strange Fish, Indeed,” This interrupted case study describes the extraordinarily COOL discovery by Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer of a living Coelacanth – a sarcopterygian fish from an order believed extinct for 70 million years. This is one of my very, very favorite biology stories, and I did touch on it briefly in lecture, but working through this case study, which allowed the story to unfold gradually, was wonderful. On the whole, I’ve found that the case study activities put out by the NSF are excellent. I used this one as is, without any modifications.

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Campus-Wide Outreach Event!

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Taking a quick break from Summer School posts to share something that happened on campus today: the school hosted about 450 elementary-aged students from the Roberts Family Development Center, a CDF Freedom School. Departments from all across campus set up hands-on activities, the Rohnert Park Fire Department and Police Department came out to say, “Hi,” and it seemed as though a good time was had by all!

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Summer School – Day 10 – Plants and Invertebrates

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I know I keep saying this, but THIS IS ANOTHER OF MY FAVORITE DAYS OF THE SEMESTER! Today was pretty much fun from start to finish. In the morning, lecture on the diversity of plants, including the various adaptations that allowed plants to make the transition from the ocean onto land. After the lecture, I’d arranged for us to have a tour of the Tropical Greenhouse on campus. The greenhouse is across campus from the science building, so along the way I gave them a little walking tour of some of my favorite plants on campus, including a few Ginkgo trees, a Cycad (my all time fave), several ferns, redwood trees, and the Butterfly Garden. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures along the campus tour, but I have loads of pics from our greenhouse tour! We were welcomed to the greenhouse by Kandis, who provides instructional support for the Biology Department, and she is an exceptionally gracious hostess!

To be honest, for most of my time at SSU, I didn’t know we had a tropical greenhouse. It was only when I was teaching this class last summer that I found out about it, but now I want to bring as many students here as possible. It’s not all that big, but there are so many GORGEOUS plants!

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