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Osmoregulation in euryhaline fishes
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Chaffey College Since |
September, 1974 |
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Courses Taught at Chaffey College |
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BIOL 22 |
Human Physiology |
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BIOL 23L |
Microbiology Lab |
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BIOL 50 |
Core Biology |
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BIOL 11 |
Evolution, Sex, & Behavior |
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BIOL 424 |
Anatomy & Physiology |
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Courses Taught at
Other Colleges |
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Biochemistry |
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Field Biology |
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Nutrition |
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Algebra |
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Geometry |
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Physics |
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Guitar |
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Music Theory |
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Volleyball |
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Interests |
Biological interests: Integration of evolutionary theory with animal behavior, particularly social dynamics.
Integrating the very small with the very large. “Think molecules, wear boots.” I am especially interested in trying to understand the connections between cellular regulation and the organization of multicellular animals.
Teaching interests: Modern theories of human learning and motivation. All my life I have been watching humans trying to learn, and trying to help them learn. A new body of experimental research is emerging that may shed light on practical approaches to student success.
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Additional Interests / Associations |
Other personality quirks and preferences:
* Guitar music. I play better than I sing.
* Video game junkie.
* Puzzle freak. I’m the only person I know who solved Rubik’s cube without peeking in the solution book.
* Computers. It is my misfortune to need them and my curse to be good at it.
* Novels: Grisham’s lawyer bashing, Science fiction (especially time travel themes), Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a monument to literary slapstick. Tolkein. I’ve read the Lord of the Rings a bunch of times. I read and write Tengwar.
* Movies: Especially fond of mindless ones with lots of explosions. Best of all would be explosions and time travel.
* Mr. FixIt: I take pride in saving lots of money repairing cars, appliances, walls, etc. I fix things that most people throw away. I make them last five more years.
* Anything outdoors. Camping, fishing, tennis, volleyball, 10k running, bird watching, soccer, knife throwing, gardening. Not all at the same time. |
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Interesting Facts: |
Born & raised in Southern California. (Ontario, mostly) 2 brothers, 2 sisters.
Catholic school kid, hence the perverse view of life.
Chaffey High School, 1965.
Summer camp counselor, 1965-68, and 1973.
Private guitar teacher and mediocre stage performer throughout the 1970s and early 80s. The music is better now than it was then.
High School teaching: THE SCHOOL of Claremont, 1971-73. This was a foray into the alternative schools movement of the 60s and 70s. At various times I taught (at least): Nutrition, Biology, Physics, Mathematics, Music Theory, Fantasy Literature, Guitar, Volleyball. The premise was that teenagers who have a role in constructing the curriculum of their education, given the freedom to learn in their own way will work hard and learn better than in a traditional school. This premise is false, but the teaching experience was unforgettable. |
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My Role as a Teacher |
First and last, I am a puzzle addict. My earliest memories involve jigsaw puzzles and word puzzles, board games and brain teasers, Chinese boxes and interlocking wire puzzles, toy tools and real tools, toy construction sets and real lumber and metal. I took apart and reassembled a headlight at age 4. I dismantled every lock in my parents' house and reassembled all but one. Carburetors, transmissions, model ships and airplanes, a model human, all before adulthood, and later as an adult, automobile engines, Rubik's cube, computers and the programming thereof have all been in my mind the same activity. The more complicated the mental challenge, the better I like it and the less able I am to let it drop. Biology is to me the ultimate puzzle. There are more kinds of pieces, more possible combinations, more levels of organization, more variations on common themes than in any other puzzle I have ever encountered. A puzzle for a hundred lifetimes. This is the perspective from which I think about my science, and the conceptual center of my teaching. Indeed, these tangible mechanical experiences form the core of my view of reality.
I teach by association and by analogy. I see parallels between chemical bonds and toy dart guns, between blood vessels and firehoses, between hemoglobin and wheelbarrows, between nerve impulses and flush toilets. I like my puzzles visible and tangible, and I will use anything within reach to invent an analogy to clarify an abstraction. In the end an analogy is nothing more than a learning aid, and I expect my students eventually to grasp the abstractions in a formal way using the vocabulary of science.
One of the reasons I do well in science is that I like to apply knowledge of one subject to solutions in another. I enjoyed studying Physics, and now I remember my lessons on levers whenever I pull on a socket wrench or pop the lid off a bottle of beer or teach students about the actions of muscles on bones. I enjoyed learning about evolutionary processes, and now I imagine natural selection whenever I pull dandelions out of my lawn or think about the history of bicycle design or the refinement of skills and strategies in successive generations of athletes. I want my students to transfer knowledge.
This is college, which means it comes after 13 years of elementary and secondary education. This means that the students should know a lot of mathematics and science and language and history and art and music and philosophy and economics and literature. I expect my students to bring it all to class. I do. At any moment, we may need to use a formula from algebra, a fact from anatomy, another fact about firehoses, and an event in history to understand the flow of blood in a vessel. To restrict your knowledge of a subject to the classroom where you learned it is to render that knowledge useless, and your effort in that area becomes wasted time. The more different kinds of knowledge you have, the more ways you can think about any problem. I expect my students to learn a lot of factual information. I expect them to merge this with information they had before. This is a bare minimum. It is only a start. The entire point as I see it is to learn to think. A mechanic would never attempt to overhaul an engine with only a screwdriver. Likewise, an ecologist would be foolish to approach the study of a woodland from a single viewpoint. The ecologist's toolbox must contain (at least) some assortment of chemistry, physics, meteorolgy, geology, astronomy, zoology, botany, microbiology, physiology, evolutionary biology, genetics, behavior, mathematics. To use less is to miss the subtlety and complexity of the forest, and hence to fail to solve the puzzle. The greatest thinkers in history have been shameless rule breakers regarding the boundaries of their knowledge and the conventions of previous wisdom.
I want my students to learn to pursue their own solutions to the puzzle. All those facts, all those lectures full of hard abstractions, all those labs where I refuse to tell you exactly what to do, all those essay questions, all those hours in my office with students searching for a way to see an idea are my systematic attempt to force them to work on their part of the puzzle. A student may indeed get a passing grade by mindless memorization of facts, but that is simply time spent, effort wasted unless those facts are later used to increase understanding. On a good day, I can think on two levels at a time: hormones and behavior, DNA and body traits, gas laws and weather. The ultimate comprehension would be to look at any part of nature and see it on all levels, from quarks to cosmos, at the same time. Nothing less is the complete solution to the puzzle. The goal is unattainable, but the fun is in the trying.
So I attempt to work my students to death, while their task is to prevent me from killing them. I take them at their own levels and try every trick I know to inform, coax, prod, frighten, tease, and motivate them to master these topics a level or two better than their starting point. Sometimes there are compelling reasons to master the topic, as in Physiology for nursing students. Sometimes it is simply a required course because someone says that a generally educated citizen should be informed on certain topics. Always for me it is the pure joy of the puzzle. Occasionally some student discovers the same esthetic satisfaction that I get, and those moments are the gold nuggets in the long stream of a teaching career.
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