Author: Wendy

Investiture of Dr. Judy Sakaki, Part 1 – Morning Workshops

- Wendy Leave a comment

Today was a special day on campus, a truly historic day, when Sonoma State University held the investiture ceremony for our 7th president, Dr. Judy Sakaki. In the morning, a wide variety of mini-workshops were held, along with a poster session, to showcase the work and research of SSU students and faculty. in the afternoon, the investiture ceremony took place in the Green Music Center. It was pretty magnificent, all the way around.

Earlier in the semester, I’d decided that this was important enough that I wanted to encourage my students to attend, so instead of lecturing today, I asked my morning class (Global Environmental Issues) to attend the poster session and at least one of the mini workshops. For Conservation Biology in the afternoon, I let them know that I would be attending the investiture, and I strongly suggested that they do the same. There were two overall reasons I wanted to do this . . . first, it’s a special day on campus, and I think it’s nice for all of us to have a break from the regular schedule from time to time. But more than that, this was a day for the entire campus community to come together, and I wanted my students to know that they’re part of this community, and maybe make some new connections with people on campus.

Turns out, this was a good decision.
My day started off in Seawolf Plaza, where I happened upon a poetry reading in progress, “SSU Student Poets Reading: Resistance and Hope in our Current Political Moment. Among the presenters was one of my former students, who shared some powerful, profound things that he’d written about the current state of our world.

From there, I headed up to the poster session, where I got talking with the authors of some research about the effect of media and technology on students. Not only was it an interesting project, but in talking with the Psychology professor who’d done the research, I found out that they knew who I was, because several of my students had come by and inquired about the research (which was part of the assignment I’d given them). Apparently, my students were asking VERY good questions, and really engaged with the process. AHHHH YES!!!!!!!! This was exactly what I’d hoped would happen. 🙂

My next stop was a session by Dr. Jeff Baldwin, “What Does Sustainability Mean? Active Learning With and From Sonoma State Students.” Anything with “active learning” in the title grabs my attention, and after Jeff started talking, I realized this talk had even more relevance to me, as he was talking about some assignments and results from a course that I’ll likely be teaching in the not-too-distant future. He described some assignments where he sent students out to do things like calculate the carbon footprint generated by their transportation needs, and spend a day riding the bus. That alone was interesting, but the really cool part is the data he’d collected from them about these activities – looking at how much it changed their own viewpoints, and how much they now seemed committed to making long-term changes to their own behavior, and possibly supporting systemic changes, as well. You can read more about his research in his paper, “Sustainability Education Through Active-Learning in Large Lecture Settings: Evaluation of Four Out-Of-Class Exercises.” Afterwards, I chatted for a few minutes with a couple of other professors, and we had a good conversation about how to improve learning outcomes for students, while keeping our own workloads under control.

After a lunch meeting, I headed in the direction of the Green Music Center. Along the way, I decided to wander along Copeland Creek, and through the Butterfly Garden. It was an absolutely stunning day, and the sound of the water trickling through the creek never fails to cheer me. Here are a few photos I took along my walk:

Mossy Logs
Mossy logs alongside Copeland Creek

 

I’ll cover the actual ceremony in a separate post, as this one’s getting a bit long. Plus, I’m waiting for the event’s photographer to post some photos online.

 

 

Sampling For Benthic Macroinvertebrates

- Wendy Leave a comment

I had a great morning out on the creek yesterday, taking some Entomology students out to sample benthic macroinvertebrates in Copeland Creek. This project is a true win/win: I’m getting data for a long-term monitoring study of the creek, and the students are fulfilling a service learning requirement for their biology course.

Before I go into the details, let me take a quick step back for some definitions, for anyone who might not be familiar with some of these terms: Macroinvertebrates are animals without backbones that can be seen with the naked eye (“macro” = large), and benthic refers to the ecological zone at the bottom of a body of water, in this case the creek bed. Entomology is the scientific study of insects, and they were our primary focus, although we’re looking at other invertebrates as well, including arachnids (spiders, and their kin), worms, and maybe even some crustaceans, like crayfish, if we happen upon any of them.

What we’re doing is pretty straightforward: I’m having them follow the same protocols our Restoration Ecology students developed last semester, so we can add to that data set. Copeland Creek is seasonal, and doesn’t have running water for part of the year (including the period of time when last semester’s sampling was done), so I’m particularly interested in having data taken at different times of the year.

Copeland Creek
Copeland Creek

Yesterday, we reviewed the protocols in lab, and brainstormed some ideas about how to format our data collection forms. Then I sent them out into the creek to (literally) get their feet wet. They sampled for an hour, and we’re planning to collect at least one more set of data next week, and possibly a third set, as well. Right off the bat, though, we noticed a BIG different in both abundance and diversity of aquatic inverts, compared with what they found last semester. We sampled in the same general area, but in the fall, there’s just a small pool that holds water year round. This time of year, the creek is running quite nicely.

I really enjoyed being out on the creek, and my students seemed to enjoy it as well. It’s not a hard sell . . . getting to wade into the creek and catch stuff and get school credit for doing it? It’s a pretty sweet gig. 😀 Once we’d finished sampling, we preserved all our samples in alcohol, but we didn’t even try to ID most of them. We’ll key them all out at once, after we’ve finished all our collecting trips.

Entomology is cool
Samples!
Dobsonfly larva???
Entomology is cool

More soon . . . we’ll be meeting again next week!

 

Rules for Teachers

- Wendy Leave a comment

While taking some time away from the annual meeting of the Western Section of The Wildlife Society, we visited a few places in the old downtown area of Sacramento, including the Old Sacramento Schoolhouse Museum, a replica of the type of schoolhouses that were found in the area in days gone by. The building was charming, and apparently they provide tours and an educational program for thousands of schoolchildren every year. (My son and I spent the day at a similar museum in the Dougherty Valley a few years ago, where his class was walked through a typical day in the life of a schoolchild from this era).

Old Sacramento Schoolhouse Museum
Old Sacramento Schoolhouse Museum

One of the chalkboards offered a brief history of Sacramento:

Brief History of Sacramento
Brief History of Sacramento

(It appears that flooding was a perpetual problem. Not too surprising, given that the city was built on a floodplain).

The thing I found most interesting, however, was this series of three posters with “Rules for Teachers” for various years. At the time, we all read through them and laughed at how ridiculous some of the rules were, but looking back, I’m far more interested in viewing these lists as a glimpse into our perception of the lives of women in the not-so-distant past. Now, before I get into any commentary, a brief word on the authenticity (or lack thereof) of these “historical documents” . . . according to Snopes, lists of rules identical to these, or with only minor differences, are posted in a variety of schoolhouse museums, but rather than being authentic, they were probably created in the 1930s as a “grim reminder” of how awful things were in the past. The Snopes’ article concludes, “Perhaps this piece tells us more about our contemporary vision of life in the 1870s than it does about life in the real 1870s.” Either way, I think it’s an interesting starting point for a conversation.

Some observations:

Both men and women are represented in the earlier documents (1872 and 1886), but in 1915, all but one of the rules are explicitly aimed at women. Not too surprising, considering that teaching elementary school children has often been considered a job appropriate for women (and only for women). The thing that did surprise me is in the 1872 poster, while women are mentioned, male pronouns are used throughout the document (e.g. “The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week in his pay”). I’m not sure if that is meant to reflect the reality of more men in the profession at the time, or if it’s merely an artifact of a generally sexist outlook across society.

Male teachers were apparently allowed to marry, while that was grounds for dismissal for women. Men were given one or two nights a week off, while there is no similar mention for women. Women are also expressly forbidden from joining “feminist” movements such as the suffragettes. (Incidentally, this might be evidence of the lack of authenticity of these documents; according to Nancy Cott in “The Grounding of Modern Feminism,” the word “feminist” was not in use in the United States until 1910).

Smoking and drinking were forbidden across the board, and there appears to have been no retirement plan. But the 1915 list in particular gives a detailed description of standards for both appearance and behavior, but these are obviously aimed solely at women. Some are not too surprising – skirts not too high above the ankle, no hair dye or bright colored clothing, etc. But I found some of them baffling: “You may not loiter downtown in ice cream stores,” and “You may not travel beyond the city limits unless you have permission of the chairman of the board.”

I guess what I wonder the most is why these documents a) exist and b) are used today to describe conditions in the past. Were women (and male teachers) subject to extra scrutiny, and expected to be morally above reproach? Yes, that’s certainly true (although an overview of any literature documenting this is outside the scope of these musings). In fact, it’s still happening today – there are many recent cases of teachers being dismissed for lawful activities that were nevertheless viewed as being inappropriate in some way. So, there is a reality behind this, but how do we gain any insight from documents that are clearly not authentic? Maybe they’re meant to be humorous, or charmingly nostalgic, but I’m uncomfortable with a museum presenting something like this as part of an exhibit on the history of education. I’d rather see historical exhibits backed up with real history, rather than something fabricated like these “rules for teachers” appear to be.

 

Dissections in Vert Morph – For Science!

- Wendy Leave a comment

(Post backdated to 2010, when these photos were originally taken). 

Dissections nearly scared me away from biology. No kidding, when I first graduated from high school, I considered going into biology, but I always vetoed the idea, because I was convinced I’d never be able to handle dissecting an animal that had once been alive.

This wasn’t a new thought . . . when I was in elementary school (around 4th grade, IIRC), as part of the gifted/talented program, we were asked to dissect frogs. I decided that I wouldn’t do it, and told the teacher as much. Fortunately for my young psyche, this wasn’t a problem – they even allowed me to take the (living) frog home as a pet.

Fast forward a couple of decades, when I realized that I wanted to do something tangible to help the state of the Earth. Conservation work seemed the most direct way to do this, and biology seemed to be the most direct way to get involved with conservation. I knew that dissections would be in my future, but I figured I could handle it. After all, I’d given birth. It didn’t seem like dissecting something could be more intense than that. I’d do it, for science!

Finally, the opportunity arrived in Vertebrate Evolutionary Morphlogy, which I needed to compete the Evolution and Ecology concentration for my major. I was a bit nervous, but when the time came, I was surprised to find that it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I’d anticipated.We dissected two animals during the course of the semester – the first was a dogfish shark, and the second was a cat. Admittedly, the cat was tricky at first, but once we’d removed the skin it stopped seeming like something that could once have been a pet, and was instead an interesting collection of connected muscles, and bones, and nerves, and other tissues. Sure, there were bad smells, but more than anything, it was interesting. Really, really interesting to cut something open and see how it’s put together inside. To follow the muscles, and nerves. To see how the lens fits into an eye. For science!

Since then, I’ve done other things I would have once found distasteful – I’ve pinned dozens and dozens of insects, dissected squids and earthworms, filed notches into the shells of baby turtles, cut up mice and rats into bite-sized pieces for animals in my care. Occasionally, I have moments when I feel like a bit of a monster, even now, if I have to cut up a live mealworm for one of my lizards. But mostly, things like this don’t bother me anymore.

I’m doing them for science.