One of the silver linings among the many dark clouds of 2020 was the large number of newspapers and magazines that made their pandemic-related content freely available to all readers. Their excellent, fact-checked, professionally-written content is usually behind a paywall. Some newspapers and magazines give readers access to a few free articles each month, with […]
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Pandemic Pedagogy Chronicles Part 4: Addressing Black Lives Matter in our Courses
The day that in-person classes were cancelled at York University, was the same day that Breonna Taylor was shot and killed by policemen. They erroneously entered her apartment looking for someone who didn't live there. The police have still not been charged for the murder. I read a newspaper article about Ms. Taylor's death the […]
My pandemic pedagogy planning began in January 2020
It's August 2nd. I haven't yet posted on this lab blog in 2020. I did write some posts for my Applied Plant Ecology course blog. BIOL 4095 ran from January to April 2020. One of its 11 topics is invasive, non-indigenous organisms, which meant that I began including the spread of the novel virus, SARS-CoV-2 […]
Google Doodles for Reflecting on Science Communication and History
I will always have a soft spot for Google, hailing back to 1999 when I used to recommend it to my ecology students, as a cool up-and-coming internet search engine. This continues, despite my fairly strong opinions about the need for tech giants to be regulated, and for large portions of their staff, including the […]
COP25 saw more of the same rhetoric and policies as at COP15
Members of the York University delegation to COP25 on Madrid will be reporting back to the community on January 14th, 2020 (details left). I've been teaching undergraduate and graduate students about the greenhouse effect, global warming and climate change since 1992, when I taught my first applied plant ecology course at York University. I couldn't […]
Reflections on the year in higher education 2019: Part 3
When I realized that the first of my six catch-up 2019 blog posts was really long, I split it into three posts! Some thoughts about my past thirty years as a professor: 1990 to now As I juggled my family with research, teaching and administrative duties during the 1990s, I realized that my kind of […]
Reflections on the year in higher education 2019: Part 2
When I realized that the first of my six catch-up 2019 blog posts was really long, I split it into three posts! Some thoughts about my past decade in academia: 2000-19 In 2010, I was three and half years into what would become a seven-year, four-term stint as director of the pan-university Institute for Research […]
Reflections on the year in higher education 2019: Part 1
It's December 30, 2019. I know that many colleagues will either be submitting the last of their Fall Term grades, or casting their minds forward to their Winter Term teaching. I'm in the latter group. I hope that student members of the academic community are resting, having fun and catching up on their sleep, and […]
Two March panels on Science Communication featuring journalists (and me)
I have had the pleasure of working with professional journalists since the 1990s, because, since I was in high school, I have always held the view that publicly-funded science should be made accessible to the public. And, since I'm a political junkie, I have always seen a connection between science and politics, and the public […]
Celebrating the International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2019 at the University of Toronto
Science Twitter brings connections near and far. One local young scientist, whom I met through Twitter, who continues to impress me, is #SciComm-er extraordinaire, University of Toronto doctoral student Ms. Farah Qaiser. Last Fall, Farah kindly invited me to be the guest speaker at Gerstein Library's Wikipedia Editathon in celebration of February's International Day of […]
