Being on the school Calendar Committee is not the most glamorous academic service assignment. Our task — create the academic calendar for coming school years — seems so simple that it might beg the question “what’s the need for a committee?”. Well, once you find a ‘calendar system’ that works for a given institution, the Read More
A Major Post, Architecture, Art & Design, Assessment Methods, Mentoring, Pratt Institute, TeachingAround this time of year at Pratt a great variety of student sculpture work sprouts up on the grounds. I thought that this one was particularly interesting. I could not find out what its title was or who made it, but I thought that it nicely captured our relationship to grass, especially on the Pratt Read More
A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Art & Design, Eutrophication, Pollution, Science in Art & DesignIt is once again that time of year, the time when trees that rely on wind pollination dump a really absurd amount of pollen into the air. The surfaces of outdoor objects become covered in a layer of yellow dust that is shockingly visible to the naked eye. When it rains, run-off nearly glows yellow Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Behavior, Divergence, PollinationSince I began teaching Ecology at Pratt, I have used the re-introduction of wolves to Yellowstone as the cornerstone case study of my community ecology lessons. Using material originally developed by my colleague Damon Chaky for the Ecology for Architects course, I ask my students to use ecological theory to explain some of the changes that Read More
A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Community Ecology, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Interactions, Keystone Species, MSCI-270, Ecology, MSCI-271, Ecology for Architects, Predation, Public PolicyToday this site topped over 75,000 page views, an accomplishment that took just short of four years. And the number of spam comments that have accosted the site so far? That would be 125,651! So, you have that correct: for every time a person views a page on my site, my site is attacked by Read More
A Minor PostEvery year in my ecology courses I have my students complete an ecological footprint analysis of their own lifestyle and the lifestyle of an older relative. I have been asking my students to do these for each of the eight years that I have taught at Pratt Institute, so I have accumulated a lot of Read More
A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Biomes, Ecological Footprinting, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Food, MSCI-270, Ecology, MSCI-271, Ecology for Architects, Quantitative Analysis, Resource Consumption, SustainabilityI have been lucky to serve as faculty advisor to the Envirolutions student club at Pratt for the past six years. There have been a lot of great projects done by the club over these years, and some of the best have been centered on Pratt’s Green Week, an annual on-campus celebration of sustainability. This Read More
A Major Post, Envirolutions, Life Cycle Analysis, Resource Consumption, Sustainability, Sustainable PrattRecently I have come to realize that (too) many professors have a profound disdain for Wikipedia. Although I sometimes encounter this disdain directly, most of the time I see contempt for Wikipedia reflected through my students. These stupid professorial attitudes about Wikipedia tend to cast a pretty unflattering reflection off of their students. It is Read More
A Major Post, Altruism, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Information Literacy, Reciprocity, Reputation, Social Norms, TeachingAccording to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, it appears that February 2015 will be the month in which the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeds 400 part per million: Various sources have been predicting that we would soon reach this symbolic milestone, and it appears that this will be the month when it Read More
A Minor Post, Climate Change, Human limits, Sustainability, WebNational Geographic News “Is Pollution Weakening Polar Bears’ Ability to Mate?” This sounds like fodder for a late-night television laugh line, but this is a pretty scary example of how bioaccumulation of toxins can have important conservation consequences. From a conservation perspective, there is nothing worse than a ubiquitous pollutant reducing the ability of a Read More
A Minor Post, Pollution, Sex and Reproduction, Web