robertmthorson: wow well i'm going to get started here, you can see my.
robertmthorson: I think you can see my my slideshow correct the PowerPoint yeah i'm going to apologize in advance for any technical difficulties in spite of the excellent help with GSA that's just the way the world works now for me.
robertmthorson: So i'm Robert thorson and, and this is the Northeast GSA short course on teaching the anthropocene it was going to be three hours long but we decided to make it two hours so that'd be time for some field trips and other things afterwards so it's only two hours.
robertmthorson: The purpose of this of this short course is mainly for me to share with you our experience with the idea that you can use that experience and do whatever you want with it rejected or embrace it or take pieces of it or this and that.
robertmthorson: But i'm also very interested in in networking and collaborating because we've had an astonishing success with our anthropocene course.
robertmthorson: At it at the University of Connecticut and and i'm very interested in collaborating on.
robertmthorson: on how to do that and how to set it up and i'm very eager to help you, because it really it became within one year our largest enrolled undergraduate course and they just keep coming in and now we're on four or five campuses and filling sections.
robertmthorson: So the goal, then, is, after some networking and collaborating is basically to share, you know who we are, as G seo scientists because we're assuming we're all geoscientists here.
robertmthorson: To help future leaders become more effective planetary citizens by learning that it's the whole earth we're talking about, not a piece of it, not one of the components and also to give them deep time context that's really, really critical for us.
robertmthorson: So the learning outcomes, this is the learning objectives of the things that I want you to walk away with I want you to be familiar with our case history not just.
robertmthorson: What we do, but why we did it and why we had to do it, and then a mutual exchange of ideas back and forth i've reserved plenty of time near the end of the class.
robertmthorson: To hear your individual stories and sharing materials, and this is the list that I had signed up, I wanted to limit it to 20 so we would have time to talk back and forth.
robertmthorson: And this is a list of the people that we had sign up and we're mostly here now, so what i'm going to do is fast forward by the next slide which has phone numbers and there's the phone numbers and email contacts I will share those with everybody unless they have an issue.
robertmthorson: Now the schedule.
robertmthorson: we're already into the welcome and goals here and what i'd like to do after we get to meet each other and know who's here is to talk just a few points about the anthropocene in general and how it's influencing my thinking as somebody who who took introductory freshman geology in 1969.
robertmthorson: Then i'd like to to talk about our case study you know parts of better interesting and parts of it a little boring but I think people interested in developing their own courses are going to want to know.
robertmthorson: What we ran into what our obstacles were then we'll take a break for five minutes, and then I want 20 minutes of sharing that's basically a minute apiece to share your story or a reaction to this event.
robertmthorson: or asked me a question, whatever you like to do, and then I reserved 40 minutes for a group discussion at the end and as.
robertmthorson: And I think we do need to end a three because they wanted to pick up something else at 350 so that's the basic plan for today.
robertmthorson: And what that means is i'm going to stop my screen share right now and then make sure i'm in the right place on my talk yes i'm going to stop my screen share go to gallery view.
robertmthorson: And and just hopefully have the participants introduce themselves and take a minute, please or 30 seconds, just to say why you took the course what your interests are and what you hope to get out of it.
robertmthorson: So, and why don't I just call on people in order, I think I have the first to our tech support so let's go to Douglas rice.
Douglas Reusch: And Doug rice at university of maine at farmington I just posted a file, this is a last minute thing we did in December, our universities constructing a strategic plan.
Douglas Reusch: And my reaction was to as a student project develop our version of a strategic plan in the anthropocene because the one that's being developed as a archaic, I think, and I do really if people if this resonates with people right to our President.
Okay.
robertmthorson: Thank you Douglas now we're up to Paul and then Gary.
Paul Olsen: I am polls and i'm professor and environmental sciences at Columbia University and my interest is twofold one is the science issue of the humans as geological forces.
Paul Olsen: And the second is in teaching in that I found especially remotely that to engaging students with the concepts of prophecy and the social enigmas that are inherent in it, or a good way to engage students and actually thinking about larger context.
Paul Olsen: And I think that's very, very important good.
robertmthorson: Thank you we're up to Gary and then Mike.
Gary Gomby: My name is Gary gumby i'm an adjunct at central Connecticut State University where i've been teaching a class on the anthropocene.
Gary Gomby: Since.
Gary Gomby: And to undergrad class that is primarily.
Gary Gomby: joined by students who have zero backgrounds in science, they take it as their gen ED.
Gary Gomby: And I actually think that's you know amongst our most important audience because it's probably the only class they may take out of university that will lead for us to kinds of issues they have to face, so I regard the courses, particularly important.
Gary Gomby: And then meeting for recently to talk about this has been really great thanks so i'm looking forward to this meeting today.
robertmthorson: Yes, and thank you for that Gary I would just say that we had an honor student say that they had no idea that rocks had anything to do with the climate.
robertmthorson: Or the the kind of students were getting out of business majors, and that is the target audience for our class.
robertmthorson: And you've also heard anthropocene and anthropocene it's pronounced both ways depending on which your accent prefers I went to the merriam Webster standard American dictionary so that's the one i'm using.
robertmthorson: we're up to them.
robertmthorson: yeah we're up to.
robertmthorson: let's see.
Mike Wizevich: Mike okay Mike was a bitch and like Gary i'm at central Connecticut State University fashion and geological science department and yeah good work and then communicating with Gary we have mutual interest, I teach gene morphology and I actually have a lab in a.
Mike Wizevich: lecture on the anthropocene you know in in G morphology how he's changed the earth's surface i'm always interested in just academically To be honest, the one one level.
Mike Wizevich: And also i'm always looking to try to make the introductory classes, that I teach you know more.
Mike Wizevich: relevant to the students and you know Gary and I we've talked about this a lot, this is an important thing and we've actually been kind of set grant hopefully we'll hear about that sometime soon.
robertmthorson: Good luck on that.
Mike Wizevich: yeah so you know it's something we've we've been interested in, and I think I don't know if i'll develop a course per se like Gary has but I definitely want to integrate some of the material that I learned about today into my.
Mike Wizevich: You know, physical geology class for one.
robertmthorson: Then we have Christine hatch and Emmanuel rich.
Christine Hatch: hi i'm Christine has an extension professor at university of Massachusetts in the geosciences department, so that means I do I educate folks who are within the university walls and outside of them on a.
Christine Hatch: variety of topics our department geosciences is considering doing something like this as a an integrative freshman experience course which is kind of a.
Christine Hatch: seminar course I think it's a good way to get your feet wet and i've also been interested in this from a research topic, I have an undergraduate student who's doing a presentation tomorrow morning.
Christine Hatch: And we're looking at a sediment records that looks for all the world like a regular like regular sedimentary layers but we humans put them there.
Christine Hatch: So i'm kind of fascinated in this idea that we can we can influence the sedimentary record, we can influence you know we influenced so many things, but.
Christine Hatch: But it's interesting how you can use our standard geologic science techniques and find things that are 100% human generated.
Christine Hatch: And then analyze those through different lenses that cross disciplines, maybe go into anthropology maybe go into geology maybe go into some water quality and other chemistry get started so that's kind of where where i'm coming from.
robertmthorson: Well that's great then we're up to me well.
Emmanuelle Rich: I.
Emmanuelle Rich: Am a senior undergraduate at Boston college I studied environmental science and i'm obviously not a professor, so I won't be teaching the npc in any anytime soon.
Emmanuelle Rich: But I developed a research project on it for my particular field course last Semester and i've engaged, a lot of conversations with family and friends and generally.
Emmanuelle Rich: People not in the scientific community community about it i'm generally pretty interested in scientific communication and how to teach about interactions between humans and the environment to friends and interested people right.
robertmthorson: But we were, thank you for that now we're up to Janet and then Jason can it work and Jason lease.
robertmthorson: Well, we can move on.
Mike Wizevich: let's.
robertmthorson: I don't know if they're trying, they may be there muted, but I.
Mike Wizevich: got that little red.
Gary Gomby: onions muted.
robertmthorson: I see yeah that's right yeah man, it was muted.
Janet Wert Crampton: i'm trying to cram in rockville Maryland long since retired from all your different jobs, I live in a retirement Community I deal with the grandparents of your students.
Janet Wert Crampton: Yes, and these grandparents need information so they can encourage your students to take these courses to study yeah whenever you're teaching.
Janet Wert Crampton: On the outer open scene is.
Janet Wert Crampton: Very important i've seen way too much of it and light travels.
Janet Wert Crampton: The United States and you're going to give me a backup information, so I can talk to my colleagues more sensibly about what their chil grandchildren are learning.
robertmthorson: Well, thank you that's great Jason are you there.
Jason Lees: and Joe what.
robertmthorson: After Jason.
Jason Lees: I am.
Jason Lees: I am a.
Jason Lees: Science teacher at the Granite state high school in the new Hampshire state prison prison system.
Jason Lees: And i'm looking to find some other ways to talk to.
Jason Lees: let's just say stubborn adults, sometimes about these issues and hopefully present new information in a different way, with my limited resources being in a prison of.
robertmthorson: that's great Okay, then we're up to Joe Joe butch and then Mike we already got Mike.
Joe Butch: Here we go, can you hear me now.
robertmthorson: yep I gotcha okay.
Joe Butch: i'm a job which i'm from buffalo New York, I am retired and i've been teaching a lot of courses as an adjunct initially Paleo and photography and then like the environmental types of courses.
Joe Butch: In like you I my undergraduate was in the 60s and i'm interested in a lot of new developments in.
Joe Butch: In each class i've been challenged with the technology so fortunately I have a student who's good with a lot of the material that would help along i'm interested in learning what I can about teaching the end practicing Indian fencing yeah.
robertmthorson: Okay that's good now is there anybody still here we have 15 participants somebody just joined is there anybody here who hasn't had a chance to introduce themselves.
robertmthorson: Okay, how about any of the GSA people want to say something before I move on.
RISE GSA Staff: William: This is William here I recognize a few familiar faces from.
RISE GSA Staff: William: From the Northeast meetings recent.
RISE GSA Staff: William: As well as past northeast meetings just want to thank everybody for being here, I don't want to take any more time, but thanks for signing on and, of course, if you ever need anything from headquarter standpoint.
RISE GSA Staff: William: You can certainly give me a call or shoot me an email and help me out of zoom However, I can, so thank thanks everybody for being here.
robertmthorson: Okay, well, thank you to GSA for supporting this and now i'm going to share my screen and go back to my talk.
robertmthorson: Now we're doing, I hope you can all hear me now we're doing very well we're right on time, the welcome and goals was going to.
robertmthorson: Take about 20 minutes and now we're up to a few points, and these are not going to be about designing a course they're not going to be the outline of the course or any just some general.
robertmthorson: Thought experiments and ideas and and how i've been grappling with the anthropocene i'd like to say i've done a lot of work on human impact on the environment wetlands sedimentation you know stone walls.
robertmthorson: From Alaska all the way down here to New England and parts of.
robertmthorson: Chile as well i've done a lot of research but i'm not an anthropocene specialist in terms of the science i'm an anthropocene pedagogy just you know, is trying to use this as a way to teach the the you know, our group at uconn.
robertmthorson: Okay D notation and connotation, I remembered thinking about this when I developed a dinosaur course about 20 or 30 years ago that swelled our audiences.
robertmthorson: And this is the same basic thing you know, find a subject that interest people and use it to to let people know that geology is a thing.
robertmthorson: And i'm going to say that again, I mean it's been a thing for me for half a century, but there's a lot of people coming into our classes, because of the botched way in which K through 12 education is done.
robertmthorson: They don't even know geology is a thing or if they do know what they have it wrong so that's the group i'm trying to reach here.
robertmthorson: Now, in D notation we know what it is it's a geologic epic it will have a global stratified point at the bottom of it.
robertmthorson: Is geologic calendar is divided into units that are hierarchical and an epic with a capital, he is simply.
robertmthorson: You know, one of those geologic time you know so so that's what it is, in terms of D notation.
robertmthorson: Whether it's the beginning of a period or the beginning of an era we don't have to worry about that, right now, because it's actually not even official yet so I still use the lowercase E whenever I can, so the D notation of the anthropocene is that it is a time period, and that is all.
robertmthorson: that's, the only thing it is factually but indeed notation it's all kinds of things and I have read a whole literature on it in fact there's an exhibit at our university art museum on the.
robertmthorson: anthropocene and I was reading my Boston Globe just last week and there's a whole exhibit.
robertmthorson: Now developed in Maynard Massachusetts at a gallery and it's called the anthropology exhibit.
robertmthorson: The anthropology is a subdivision of the anthropocene which is even official yet so common culture and the artists are already getting into this.
robertmthorson: it's basically the slow down and human activity during the pandemic it's now called the answer bells and clearly that's an informal unit.
robertmthorson: So here are the artists embracing it and my sense is that the artists have taken off in wild directions about what the anthropocene means to the rest of us, and shortly behind them, are the humanists.
robertmthorson: And i'm not being disparaging here i'm just talking about the way it's received in the in the in the journals and the books and the and the websites that i've been following.
robertmthorson: it's as though you can make a great big deal out of the anthropocene without really understanding what it is beyond the press.
robertmthorson: And then I think conservation is you know biological conservation is have a rough time with it.
robertmthorson: Because if you admit you're in a new epic you admit that the old one is over, and of course we all know, there are plenty of extinctions happening and the rates of change are phenomenal and blah blah blah.
robertmthorson: But the word conservationist you know just says you're you're trying to hold to the past, so there's been some reluctance there.
robertmthorson: In the reading that i've done, and then the journalists like it, but they can spin it in various ways.
robertmthorson: A perfectly reputable journalist will write a book titled the adventures of the anthropocene.
robertmthorson: You know of you know, getting down to the the Center of it all, you know and there's just a lot of hyperbole in journalism that I think is starting to confuse people.
robertmthorson: The social scientists like it, but aren't quite sure what to do with it, they like it, because they feel like oh good social sciences now taking over geology because.
robertmthorson: we're there well not quite the technologists actually like it, I mean they welcome the anthropocene and i'm being very general here.
robertmthorson: i'm not i'm not trying to you know, say that all technologists are all artists are believing this way, this is my general take reading as deeply as I can, on it.
robertmthorson: And, here are some three books that i'd like to point out they're all within the last year.
robertmthorson: The one in the middle is called the great derangement climate change and the unthinkable.
robertmthorson: You know, this is the yukon reads book, this is a really prize winning novelist I mean it's a really interesting book, but basically the great derangement is really the anthropocene.
robertmthorson: If you open up the book and read into it a little bit he's talking about the anthropocene.
robertmthorson: But they don't want to use that on the title and then climate change and the unthinkable climate change is simply one manifestation of the anthropocene.
robertmthorson: So the tail is not wagging the dog the dog is wagging the tail, we need to get the anthropocene out there front and Center as the thing big enough to hold climate change and the other things and it's not unthinkable.
robertmthorson: You know, it may be unthinkable for someone who's never embraced deep time but it's eminently thinkable from someone who understands what an epic is and why earth has a pulse history.
robertmthorson: that's just something that that our students who are going to be majoring in business or in economics, or in in mechanical engineering or in environmental studies, they really don't understand these basic ideas.
robertmthorson: On the left is a book I just reviewed for the journal of environmental history deep time reckoning.
robertmthorson: This guy it's an MIT press book this guy went underground as a cultural anthropologist in the finish a high level radioactive waste repository.
robertmthorson: And and really said these guys are thinking about deep time boy that's what we should be doing in order to understand the modern environment.
robertmthorson: And so the title of his book is deep time reckoning how future thinking can help earth now i'm right on that that's what this short course and that's what our course is about.
robertmthorson: You basically do them thought experiment of being in the future, looking back on the anthropocene as if it were strata.
robertmthorson: And you see the world in a very different perspective I think most everybody in our audience knows this.
robertmthorson: And then, a pulitzer prize winning author under the white Sky, the nature of the future, you know if you open books like this, these are really, really potent cultural memes and books.
robertmthorson: Open the few pages they're talking about the anthropocene but then they instantly go to sort of in formalities, they go to connotations not de notations So perhaps the most important thing we can do is get the D notations square as a real fact and then move into more nuanced connotations.
robertmthorson: Now, this is a slide, this is a magazine, creating a human age we actually want to live in this is the positive view the anti Eo Wilson view you know Eo Wilson sees the anthropocene is a terrible tragedy.
robertmthorson: Along with many, many others, and this this this group, this magazine this organization says would be bring it on, we want the anthropocene i'm not telling my students either of those I just want them to know that the range of opinion is there.
robertmthorson: And now i'm going to humanize geoscience a little bit, because if you think about the word anthropocene epic it's a geologic epic named after humans so let's humanize it.
robertmthorson: And that's what people care about here's pompei these are new images from pompei human beings are earthly ashes to ashes dust to dust.
robertmthorson: I mean we should know that human beings are part of the earth, people say this all the time, but they never not many of my students, they don't really pause to stop and think.
robertmthorson: You know what do you really mean by that that we're part of a system we're not above it and, yes, we've heard this for 50 years.
robertmthorson: The rethink since the origin of the environmental movement that I lived through I watched Rachel Carson on TV.
robertmthorson: You know in 1963 and I thought whoa that's really interesting now I didn't know what to make of it because I was only 12 years old, you know but but but i've been at this game that long.
robertmthorson: And another thing is that is the environmental impact is just you hear it all the time you hear the word environment it's everywhere, well, what is it will strictly speaking by D notation it's the stuff that surrounds us.
robertmthorson: But it's come to mean all kinds of things and what surrounds a planet in the anthropocene is basically the mesosphere or outer space.
robertmthorson: You know even we've changed the stratosphere we've changed the troposphere and we've certainly changed the surface of the earth, but we haven't changed it below a depth of a few kilometers very much.
robertmthorson: So our impact is is is planetary and scale you can't get away from the plutonium to 39 that's in every tree ring old enough you can't get rid of that So what is the thing that surrounds an earth where human presence is everywhere.
robertmthorson: it's basically space so we're shifting the binary from the ego me or the Community me or the discipline me to everything else out there that's, the environment, you know to basically all of space and humans are vulnerable.
robertmthorson: The way my course ends is human vulnerabilities or human futures and there's four four possibilities that might hit us and my students actually really like this in the same way that like kind of a scary movie.
robertmthorson: Is that if you start thinking about human vulnerability, then you understand the idea of an epic in a way you can't unless you contemplate the end of it.
robertmthorson: And, of course, these are trace fossils and their bodies and their you know of you know volcanic ash there they're all kinds of things and so just getting students to think about what these are.
robertmthorson: is important and then here's a really simple example a cranberry bog and Massachusetts when you say, this is a you know, a cranberry bog most people I mean a lot of my students don't know what a blog is so the cranberry bog is the anthropocene farm epic.
robertmthorson: The bug that was there before it became manipulated by changing the elevation and the nutrient status and whatever you know, was a perfectly good Holocene cranberry bog it just wasn't productive, the way the anthropocene ones are.
robertmthorson: And so what was it before that, well, it was a glacial kettle out there on Cape cod and so so basically the land form is created in one epic you know the bog is created in the next epic and then the farm is created in the next epic these really simple idea.
Christine Hatch: yeah can you hear me driving i'm driving at the moment but that's exactly the research example that i'm working on, so if folks want to see more about that that particular example go check out my students.
Christine Hatch: All right, good.
robertmthorson: it's just trying to get.
Christine Hatch: students.
robertmthorson: Who aren't thinking about time to think of it in steps and those steps are called epics.
robertmthorson: And then I love this one, I was actually in the rapid city flood of.
Christine Hatch: 1972.
robertmthorson: I had the misfortune of being there, and these are cars all stacked up and you'll notice there's only one Volkswagen the engine is in the back so basically each of these cars has the engine down.
robertmthorson: Okay, and these are class, these are implicated class in streamflow and they represent the full cycle of sediment turned into or turned into cars turned back into particles, instead of their class essentially.
robertmthorson: All right, in the full cycle is also have the sunlight that makes the organic material that makes the gasoline fuel that gives you the heat.
robertmthorson: That allows you to do this, and the same thing applies to the rapid city flood storm, you know that basically created this deluge.
robertmthorson: So the basic idea are humans are within the earth, otherwise our cars wouldn't be stacked up like this and students see this, and they say oh yeah our cars are particles in a larger system.
robertmthorson: Now it's really hard for me to talk about the paradigm shift.
robertmthorson: Of what's going on with the anthropocene this was that you know fake out piece of metal out there in utah.
robertmthorson: But the book under land is really, really good I reviewed that for Ryan magazine, and I really read it carefully and.
robertmthorson: mcfarland really has it right when he talks about the paleontology of the President, again it's the idea of looking back on a present epic in the same way we'd look back on the you know the.
robertmthorson: Maastricht Ian epic you know the last one in the cretaceous or any other epic you like, so this is kind of a thought experiment and, believe it or not, my students and they're perfectly fine students have not thought about these things, its history moves forward they never look backward.
robertmthorson: And it's sort of anti uniform materialism to think about about the paleontology of the present you know you can't use the present to predict the past or vice versa, because we are something new and unique and it's also anti gradualism if you start to look at rates.
robertmthorson: Okay there's the paradigm shift is taking place, you know what's nature what's human nature we've all had read plenty of this, you know what's wilderness what's wildness.
robertmthorson: You know what is the environment in this scene of Vermont from Vermont public radio, you know a lot of those ones, have been cleared and turned into pastures and there's been two extinctions there.
robertmthorson: My guess is that they just found out, they just stated a mammoth you know from Vermont dated a 12.8 K, so it may be that that's just about the right time for humans to have something to do with the disappearance of mammals, the idea is that is that the.
robertmthorson: The the mammoth date and the earliest human date or roughly coincident.
robertmthorson: And, of course, there was another human extinction at about 400 years ago when you know the cougars and the bears and all of that were taken out and now of course they're coming back.
robertmthorson: So when you look at what seems like wilderness it's not nature is everywhere, I don't need to tell you that and human beings are everywhere and what's the difference between nature and human nature on a planet where humans are the dominant geologic agency.
robertmthorson: My favorite analogy, for what the globe, the whole globe looks like is a golf course now I don't play golf, but I do get it there's a continuum of pieces.
robertmthorson: But let's just think about the narrative this is this is within 10 miles of where I live, it's just your basic you know, a reuben.
robertmthorson: golf course and this one is in Coventry Connecticut in the eastern Highlands the basic narrative is pretty simple we had Holocene woodland.
robertmthorson: And then, it was there was a makeover and they turned it into a farm and did this, and that and this and that and then they let it go back and it came back as woods, with a weedy regrowth it wasn't.
robertmthorson: You know planned regrowth it just came back, and then there was a second makeover for the golf course.
robertmthorson: You know so there's actually a four stage history here, and most of my students have trouble seeing anything except the present by the end of the course.
robertmthorson: they're really able to peel back the layers and that puts their own environment in a different perspective.
robertmthorson: Now, if I remember the the wilderness movement, you know, the idea of setting away wilderness well let's say that doesn't exist anymore let's say we're talking about wild lands.
robertmthorson: We know those remote set asides, and then of course we know what rural is maybe it's North Dakota you know, maybe it's a maybe it's northern maine.
robertmthorson: And we know what suburbia is and we know what urban areas, and we know what a building is in the golf course analogy.
robertmthorson: You know the set asides, the the woods, you know our set asides, like any any any any park any conservation park in the rough leads to the fairway leads to the green leads to the whole.
robertmthorson: I mean there's this sense of of concentration of effort, as you move towards the whole away from the woods and I think the same thing applies to the to the globe, the way I look at it.
robertmthorson: You know that there are remote areas that are not untouched, but little touched, and then the gradient goes from wild lands to rural to suburban to urban to building i'm just putting these two ideas together so one conserve as an example, or an analogy for the other.
robertmthorson: The student anxiety of based on our surveys students really feel better after they take an anthropocene course.
robertmthorson: Because they are anxious they're anxious about what the future is going to be because they've heard these.
robertmthorson: These chicken little stories about the you know the sky is falling over and over again there's no question we're in a climate crisis i'm the last person to be a climate denier.
robertmthorson: You know, but we know that the earth has suffered some pretty serious convulsions in the past.
robertmthorson: And it's still going to be here, no matter what happens, but students aren't even sure about that, and I find they're pretty clueless about climate, they have no idea what the where it actually comes from.
robertmthorson: Well, climate is you know is distinctly regional okay and climates are made by geology and geologists invented Paleo climate.
robertmthorson: I mean they don't know that so we're trying to make the connection.
robertmthorson: climates come from the region so continents and ocean basins they come from the wobble wobble and tilt of the earth, you know and they come from the gas exchanges and solid exchanges of liquid exchanges that are working through these reservoirs So what is fossil fuel well.
robertmthorson: it's a fossil, in other words it's basically it's basically geology turned into atmosphere.
robertmthorson: But the atmosphere is part of geoscience, and so they just learn these kinds of things they're not wrecking the planet we're changing the surface of the planet.
robertmthorson: You know from the stratosphere on down we haven't done much but they haven't a clue that that's the case they think the planet is fragile.
robertmthorson: As if it weren't made of silicate materials and overshoot is something that that they're concerned about and i'm concerned about.
robertmthorson: You know, with 10 billion people and increasing and resource use and water use this is something we're thinking about but.
robertmthorson: The the examples of ecological overshoot are are very, very compelling we don't want to do that, but the key idea for them, and why they walk away from the class happier.
robertmthorson: You can trace it right back to Madame Curie you know she basically says nothing in life is to be feared it's only to be understood.
robertmthorson: now's the time to understand more so, we may fear less, I am convinced and we've been able to document this in core surveys that if they know a little bit more about the earth, they feel better so fundamentally it's a course about how the earth works.
robertmthorson: here's our context.
robertmthorson: We have real chronic issues in geoscience you know we have problems with enrollments they're small you know we don't have as many majors as we want.
robertmthorson: We kind of be marginalized by the more prestigious sciences, if you like.
robertmthorson: You know, we have an identity issue associated with with resource extraction, we have problems with diversity, because we tend to be an outdoors and and field science.
robertmthorson: Environmental programming often bypasses us through biophilia we're conflated with geography and you know.
robertmthorson: If you work in academia, you know these problems geology departments are always struggling to invent themselves and reinvent themselves, and I think the anthropocene is a really good way of doing that.
robertmthorson: So that's the basic context, now we became a new department in the fall of 2019 and i've been the head of that department or interim head now since.
robertmthorson: You know, basically December January, after that, and one of the things we did was completely redid our website and.
robertmthorson: And I think you can read that just that one button, there were stem scientists who study the earth, how it works as a planet what his history has been and how to put that to good use.
robertmthorson: And this is where we're at earth system sciences that works as a planet piece.
robertmthorson: The epic ISM or the anthropocene or the geologic calendar or deep time is the history piece, if you don't have a deep time perspective, and if you don't have a whole earth perspective.
robertmthorson: you're going to be it's going to be a real challenge to understand what's happening to the world and finally put that knowledge to good use that's our environmental.
robertmthorson: Playing card that we use, so this is something we're hammering home, and this is a quote it's scary this is February 2021 I want you to read the whole thing.
robertmthorson: This is the American geosciences institute their vision and change documents for curriculum have just come out it's a little scary there's a lot of good recommendations, but we were on top of these quote.
robertmthorson: The public doesn't have a clear perception of what geoscientist do they don't know our impact on society.
robertmthorson: Or that even geoscience occupations exist saddled with stereotypes of boom and bust petroleum industry cycles.
robertmthorson: And that most are science courses taken in high school or the introductory they're considered an easier science credit, so people avoid them.
robertmthorson: In our store friend provides little incentive for talented individuals to look more deeply at the geosciences.
robertmthorson: This is changing on our campus because of the anthropocene class they're finding out that oh my God we actually live in a geologic epic so geology must have something to do with it.
robertmthorson: And this is just pretty strange if you look at the key.
robertmthorson: out so i'll just show this one off like sea level rise people have no idea that geology has anything to do with sea level rise, but we built most of our cities below shorelines known to geologists they just weren't paid attention to.
robertmthorson: Now this is out of that agi document that just came out.
robertmthorson: And these are they interviewed you know I forget how many thousand people there were, but if people like us in the audience, you know responded to this to this study and.
robertmthorson: Earth is a complex dynamic system that's the number one concept it's, the most important concept that we can teach in our introductory classes, the second most important thing we can teach is deep time.
robertmthorson: The third most important one is to talk about climate change comes from geology and then all the rest are important but.
robertmthorson: Less than those top three moving forward in deep time the second bullet point that they had that number two deep time.
robertmthorson: Well, the ethical transition is right now that's the anthropocene we're eliminating the binary of history and pre history we're blending the thing together.
robertmthorson: In planetary space it's the whole thing.
robertmthorson: Yes, ecology is charismatic yes, we still have those Jacques Cousteau effect oceanography is really, really charismatic store meteorology and hurricanes are charismatic but geoscience owns the whole planet.
robertmthorson: You know, we basically look at the components and work on it and i'm talking earth system science.
robertmthorson: And for climate change, we are the context for every discussion that happens, so our thesis.
robertmthorson: Our thesis as a department is that no student can understand, climate change, until they understand how the planet works and what its history has been, by which I mean it's deep time history that's a very clear statement and that's where we're coming from and that's helping us out.
robertmthorson: So now our course history it's it came from a rejection that's beach Hall, where we work or used to work before coven alright, the old department.
robertmthorson: You know, we had a we had a in 2003 you do know that we had our department disappeared well the old department rejected a pilot course on global climate change after a successful pilot.
robertmthorson: That was the department devoted to rocks and minerals that wasn't going to make room for climate change, we would have been the first we were the first Department on campus teaching the first course on on campus.
robertmthorson: Thanks to the arrival of bill Romans book and I piloted that class, and it was it was just rejected.
robertmthorson: So that was bad news, and then, of course, our department dissolved, because we had issues being where there were a lot of issues we created a Center I don't need to get into department politics on that.
robertmthorson: But, but basically what happened was they invented in 2018 19 something called an environmental literacy requirement.
robertmthorson: And what we said was well, you can understand the environment without geology so we forwarded our introductory geology classes.
robertmthorson: We had about four of them, they were all uniformly rejected by the committee as not being relevant to the environment because it wasn't you hug the tree and the tree hugs you back.
robertmthorson: There had to be this dialogue of back and forth in order to qualify for that requirement that's responsible for many of our enrollees.
robertmthorson: So what we did was invented and anthropocene class and that has really done a pretty good job.
robertmthorson: Our audience is not the Foundation lab course you know, a serious geoscience introductory course it's why geology matters so it's intro to why geology matters not intro to geoscience or not interested in geology the title that we chose was the human epic living in the anthropocene.
robertmthorson: And we lead with humans in the in the syllabus you know, not with the abstract of earth system, science, we lead with human affairs.
robertmthorson: The approval oh I hate to say it, but it was bureaucratic there were eight levels, there was our own department curriculum and courses committee there's the department as a whole.
robertmthorson: Then there was a college curriculum and courses, where you fight about who gets to teach what there were two approvals there.
robertmthorson: Then there's the El the environmental literacy and the science sub committee in the Senate.
robertmthorson: And then beyond that there was the the the GR the general education oversight Committee, then the Senate and the registrar so all those levels of approval, had to be met and we did it.
robertmthorson: And then I you know piloted and prepared the course it had a text it had an audio.
robertmthorson: Speaking of that I put together the introduction to the course as a PDF file that I can send to anybody who's interested I got that ready this morning.
robertmthorson: i'm also was working on a reading list, but it got pretty messy so I decided not to send it we have videos everywhere powerpoints you know.
robertmthorson: You know modules units concepts learning will do more about that later we launched it as an online class to and and Gary gumby had a session and in the portland of.
robertmthorson: New England GSA meeting that I attended and learn from, and that was really helpful helpful to find Gary because I didn't feel as alone at that point that was a couple years ago, or maybe three years ago.
robertmthorson: Our pedagogy.
robertmthorson: We start with their interests in business policy education journalism environmental studies and we have a flexible, you know modality synchronous and asynchronous activities that are taking place.
robertmthorson: I wrote a textbook it was 350 you know, not a textbook I call it a course book because it doesn't rise to the standards of course book it doesn't even rise to the standards of really good published field guide.
robertmthorson: You know it's it's just it's stuff that was in my head that I wrote down to match the course, but the idea is that the text matches the modules and the course of the students find it really, really, easy to go through.
robertmthorson: The narrative of the course is pretty simple we just say hello you're in the course these are the mechanics and then the next lecture is well, this is the anthropocene, and this is what it really is, and this is what you think it is.
robertmthorson: And then we go into five big ideas which i'll do later.
robertmthorson: And then every day there's active learning exercises, there are self guided field trips groups engagements with discussions private reflections and we follow a mastery model of learning the content.
robertmthorson: And a low stakes testing, so we like five tests that are only worth just a little bit on your grade.
robertmthorson: In instruction we designed a single lecture instructor but now we're already using Th.
robertmthorson: So the pilot was in 2020 and we missed registration because of all of the delays in those eight levels, but we had 45 people at it.
robertmthorson: You know, without really even knowing about it, and then the course instantly closed at 70 and the next year summer we offered a template that almost filled 2020.
robertmthorson: We had two sections, with over 100 students each and because this was coven time and we didn't want to burden the instructors, with more than that.
robertmthorson: It was on every campus and there are five campuses and it was published up in yukon today the advising centers were interested.
robertmthorson: And lots of things happened in in 2000 spring coming up we're going to have two sections a 200 minimum, and you know people, just like this because butts in seats matters it's not all we do, but butts in seats really does matter, and this is really helping us out.
robertmthorson: So, how did we do the course design.
robertmthorson: First, one of the things that I do is I try and differentiate the world versus the earth it's just a way where people can learn one thing and feel good about it world comes from we're all we're as in werewolf as in human Wolf.
robertmthorson: And all this in Auld Lang syne you know it's like older everything so world is essentially everything having to do with humans from their origin forward.
robertmthorson: And Earth is actually the planet, part of which is the is the is earth earth, you know, in its original definitions had more to do with soil or terrestrial situations, but.
robertmthorson: But the the definition we rely on is the whole planet so basically that's planet versus the human members of the planet and learning that is a good beginning.
robertmthorson: There are really three anthropocene that they're thinking about.
robertmthorson: The officially it's the new epic that isn't even here yet that will probably start with a great acceleration around mid 20th century.
robertmthorson: Unofficially there's a first major impacts, you know occur everywhere, for you, it might be the Colombian exchange, it might be.
robertmthorson: It might be, it might be the arrival of the pilgrims it might be the arrival of.
robertmthorson: of early humans to Australia, you know to wipe out the game at 45,000 years ago.
robertmthorson: It just, whatever your context is for us it's principally the movement of euro Europeans in New England and the conversion of the of the forest into farms.
robertmthorson: You know that's a major impact that's not officially the anthropocene but we kind of call it that unofficially because that's where popular culture is.
robertmthorson: And semantically you know we've got all these all of the humanities and social scientists and artists and musicians, you know they're dealing with the anthropocene.
robertmthorson: across a wide range of cultural issues and what what i'm really hoping, is that the anthropocene is the thing that holds the other big things that we care about.
robertmthorson: And that it's a cultural meme that gets big enough and potent enough to cause us to rethink what is the environment and i'm following a book by jed party here called after nature which I reviewed in in in in in manuscript form for Harvard press when I was working with them.
robertmthorson: And it's just it's just a splendid book on on the idea that that we know what Environmentalism is now, but we didn't use to know, because there was no name for it.
robertmthorson: You know, environmental ISM isn't ISM you know that that basically took over in the mid 60s and up into the early 70s environmentalism didn't used to exist.
robertmthorson: But once you gave it a name that power really picked up and we're doing something similar with the anthropocene, although that may not be the name, it seems to be working okay right now.
robertmthorson: So, will it be futurism will it be deep time ISM will it be epic isn't planet ISM earth ISM I don't care that's not my point I don't get to decide, but there's something really big like that that I want to be equivalent to environmentalism because I think the anthropocene is post environmentalism.
robertmthorson: premises about students, that they had a bad experience with K to 12 that's almost true to every single one maybe maybe 1% of our students had a good experience with that.
robertmthorson: clueless about how the earth works diverse backgrounds high anxiety, they want to take care of the environment, but they don't really know how to do it.
robertmthorson: Climate change is huge, for them, mainly a political agenda, like environmentalism without really thinking about the climate.
robertmthorson: And the struggle, they also have struggled to concentrate, so we, in the course design We broke it down to four concepts per day, rather than one large lecture per day.
robertmthorson: and students my students perfectly good students smart students programs condition students have trouble going deep.
robertmthorson: You know they go abroad much easier and there's a book called the shallows by Nicholas carr it's pretty old published in 2005 I believe.
robertmthorson: But man it's really a good book it's a scary book about how this this prize winning journalist found himself unable to go deep after too much time on the Internet.
robertmthorson: So I know i'm just yakking away here but we'll try and get through this, so we can have a discussion so one thing that I find really helpful in my instruction is to build rhythms into the course that is a very predictable what's going to happen.
robertmthorson: And, and we start with a course there's a course rhythm, which basically as you open and close it like the book ends and we do this with reflections.
robertmthorson: And then there are a module there's a module rhythm and basically you get four to six lectures.
robertmthorson: or presentations followed by activities, followed by a review and a test, and then you repeat that five times or four times.
robertmthorson: it's a rhythm and then there are units what I did was I took a semester, and I took out five or six class periods due to exams or or you know snow days or whatever, and I ended up with 22.
robertmthorson: In a regular Semester and said okay so for a Tuesday Thursday schedule I got 22 units and each of those is like the classic traditional old lecture.
robertmthorson: that's a rhythm every day they know what's going to happen and it's the same every module they know what's going to happen in the course they know what's going to happen.
robertmthorson: But in the concepts each of the units has four discrete learning outcome or learning objectives and so there's 88 many lectures that they can watch each one is a concept that i'm trying to get across.
robertmthorson: Just to break a slide to break up some of the monotony of my heavy tech slides here the collateral damage there's a squirrel on the road next to a can on the road.
robertmthorson: All run over by you know, during coven so what what's the story there well.
robertmthorson: We know that the asphalt road, there are the aggregate road is is human made I don't use the word artificial anymore it's anthropocene.
robertmthorson: but so is the population of squirrels and so is the death of the squirrel and so is the can and the mining and everything everything in that image is anthropocene.
robertmthorson: And on the right, we could say the same that's the famous image of a public public image of the bison skulls being turned into fertilizer you know I mean that kind of extinction is just clear.
robertmthorson: straight out now deliberate so there's an aesthetic and a utilitarian conservation that ties into the anthropocene.
robertmthorson: And now learning outcomes, this is a little bit long on the slide so i'm going to try and be brief, but these are like your learning objectives, the course learning objectives not not for the units or for the concepts, but for the whole course.
robertmthorson: Number one the anthropocene is a new geologic epic number two I want you to learn how the earth works, so you can put it to good use.
robertmthorson: Number three.
robertmthorson: If human beings have the power to screw something up then.
robertmthorson: They have the power to restore that system somehow some way.
robertmthorson: And you know i'm not idealistic pie in the sky here, I know there are issues, and I know that some some processes can be reversed, or that some will be in effect for a really long time, but the the overall idea is that we were not helpless.
robertmthorson: Another thing they really need to know is that geography and biodiversity.
robertmthorson: there's they've changed continuously they're never there never not changing, and I think we mostly know this, that there is no such thing as bio diversity as if it was something ancient it's always changing those who look at extinctions notice in geography changes.
robertmthorson: Okay humanities most costly mistake, you know is basically just making the assumptions that environments, are going to remain stable at human timescales, this is most dramatic with a building our big cities right next to the sea level.
robertmthorson: I think that's the biggest.
robertmthorson: Not philosophical mistake, but the biggest most costly mistake.
robertmthorson: Because retrofitting those cities and pulling them up from the shore or providing barriers are really, really going to be tough I was evacuated from hurricane sandy in 2012 and I know what that feels like.
robertmthorson: I made the mistake of renting a sabbatical House on a salt marsh because I thought well the odds are i'll get through it, you know didn't work out.
robertmthorson: Okay, our power is both constructive and destructive.
robertmthorson: I mean i'm i'm i'm presenting on a computer interface, and if we didn't have mining and if we didn't have a house if we didn't have all the good things that human beings are doing.
robertmthorson: You know I couldn't be able to do this, but we're destructive in the process.
robertmthorson: And I just don't want to castigate all of humanity's efforts as destructive because that's where I think a lot of the students are at right now.
robertmthorson: And the launching pad, this is a key idea, the launching pad for human origins, you can argue all you want about it, but basically organisms adapt.
robertmthorson: from environmental stress and rapid change in an African Africa is rift valley climate change was being amplified you know by the lake sequence in the.
robertmthorson: In the drought cycles and that had something to do with human origins in the 200,000 year old range we're not just sure whether that's 300 or not they found a new spell in Morocco or new artifacts Okay, the planetary takeover by humans is natural.
robertmthorson: Human may not like it, but it's it's a natural thing to be greedy, if you like, expansion and population increase for every species and Darwin.
robertmthorson: made this very clear in his book about humans, the geologic time scale is organized in a hierarchy, now we know that.
robertmthorson: An Earth is powered by geothermal from below, solar from above, and a lot of complex interactive processes of the surface, so in the simplest view of earth system it's a three layer
robertmthorson: it's the it's the atmosphere above you know the the geothermal below and then all the interactive stuff at the surface, you can't even see the biosphere on an edge wiser, you have earth you can't even see it itself in.
robertmthorson: Global human impacts of the some of local impacts, this is a self evident concept but students just have jaw drops when they realize that there is no.
robertmthorson: Out there that's coming into impact you locally, that the thing that's out there is the sum of all the local impacts and the future of humanity is being driven by geothermal.
robertmthorson: Climatic cosmic and evolutionary processes now that's a lot to take in but those are the course objectives and i'll just skip this for now.
robertmthorson: This is the layout of the course the class meetings, you can see him on the left there the calendar there's sessions 28 sessions, the dates depending on when you are the modules.
robertmthorson: The the readings, the course book The quizzes.
robertmthorson: there's a quiz and a write up for each one a writing prompt.
robertmthorson: At the end of each module they do kinds of exciting things i'll explain that later.
robertmthorson: modalities of content delivery.
robertmthorson: there's a whole course site it's all online, so they can click their way through just about everything there's three levels of reading some students cannot read a book anymore, I mean I hate to say it, they just can't they want to, but they can't.
robertmthorson: But there's an entire course book with full of illustrations or they could just read condensed book, which are a matrix of introductions you know at those different levels.
robertmthorson: And then I also double caption my images to make sure that somebody can go right through the book reading just the images.
robertmthorson: day by day navigation, you can cruise through the courses, if it were an online class there's plenty of mini lectures that are recorded in various ways.
robertmthorson: Okay, active and engaged social learning, as I mentioned before, at the course level, there are two reflections at the module level.
robertmthorson: We have what I call viewpoints, these are self guided you know group social field trips.
robertmthorson: to your assigned groups there's one at a church in a cemetery on a on a on an outcrop called rebirth there's one about an intent dammed up.
robertmthorson: You know landscaping pond that they think about water and streams there's one in a greenhouse that we, we take a field trip to a greenhouse and look at.
robertmthorson: biotic evolution and plant diversity and we ended in an art museum and the idea is that these things build they build forward as self guided field trips.
robertmthorson: discussion forums each student makes a posting and then they do a response posting and we get a nice discussion going when it's coached.
robertmthorson: And they're tied to the course content and they're tied to the self guided field trips.
robertmthorson: Each module ends with a machine graded objective test, but before that we have a nice review and they do a lot of self review with some check tests.
robertmthorson: You know, are simple test questions and then we have you know we have we have four tests and that just keeps them on their toes and they can throw one out so they're not too stressed out by it.
robertmthorson: units.
robertmthorson: When you're in the daily unit like there's 22 of these they have the same basic structure, they do a reading they take a quiz on that reading before class begins.
robertmthorson: In class they do a writing prompt, which forces them to engage right off at the get go and then the basic lecture format has a variety of things, something for everybody.
robertmthorson: You know their demonstrations artwork people's stories and textbook highlights, so I tried to you know have something for everybody during each of those unit days good, we made it now i'm almost done.
robertmthorson: But let's just look at the outline of content.
robertmthorson: module eight is about getting started it's only two units long it's basically your introductory lecture and then a significant lecture unit to on defining.
robertmthorson: You know, deep time the golden spike regional impacts and the great acceleration, so they learn what the anthropocene is early in the class.
robertmthorson: This is before drop add period ends and what people figure this out, this is when they tend to come, they say that is so cool and they tend to add the course.
robertmthorson: And then module B, C D and E B is five big ideas I just start with human ideas you know, and I bring the geology to the human ideas, instead of bring the human ideas to the geology.
robertmthorson: module will see is basically a seven unit miniature version of introductory geology.
robertmthorson: You know it's basically how the earth works treated as a system, so there isn't much human activity there and the idea is to define a baseline earth how it works before human beings did their makeover.
robertmthorson: So that's the next one, the human makeup and then human futures is let's go into the future and look back on the present and see how it happens.
robertmthorson: So these are the, these are the human ideas human emergence what's the origin of life, human phylogenetic what are, what are the climates that gave rise to human beings.
robertmthorson: And what's our use social success all about it's the group solidarity you social.
robertmthorson: Success that allows us to be so successful as a species human potency this is where I really bring in science, because the science gives rise to the engineering, which gives rise.
robertmthorson: You know, to the technology, which gives rise to the power, which gives rise to our control and I have just a series of things that I talked about in here.
robertmthorson: The hegemony of humans taken over the planet, the sixth extinction and how much of Hurricane Katrina is due to us rather than some natural effect.
robertmthorson: This is a very effective part of the course reference point, I asked them to imagine the earth.
robertmthorson: From Carl Sagan pale blue dot perspective, you know from out there in the Rings of Saturn looking at earth as a pale blue dot you know how does that change your view of the planet and uniformly, they say, oh my God, I never thought about that, before.
robertmthorson: that yes, that really makes me appreciate Earth is tiny and insignificant, or you can ask them to view the earth from the inside, at its Center looking outwards on a very volatile surface through deep time.
robertmthorson: So from the iron core our earth looks very different but you're seeing the surface in both of those views.
robertmthorson: And then another reference is our place in time and then our place in purpose, these are old ideas in the humanities and sciences.
robertmthorson: And color chauvinism they're fascinated by this.
robertmthorson: everybody's talking about going green well green polar bear is a dead polar bear you know if the grand Canyon were green it would look like West Virginia.
robertmthorson: You know I just if he if he do really want the you know the south Antarctic ice sheet to go green no but people are swept up into greening and going on the earth and, and this is due to a.
robertmthorson: distinct biophilia, you know as though the geo affiliate beneath the biophilia didn't matter so that's what i'm really trying to do, and the course mantra for me in every course is no rocks know ecosystems, no culture.
robertmthorson: it's just six words no rocks know ecosystems, no culture there's a narrative that's a direction that's a hierarchical structure in six words.
robertmthorson: And they realize oh my gosh and a lot of people will take the cultures and go down to the level of the ecology and say, yes, the ecology supports the culture, but the level below that is the geology supports the ecology, which supports the culture.
robertmthorson: And climate realism i'm amazed at how poorly people do on this when they take their test questions you know what is climate change, who invented it what's the history, been.
robertmthorson: Where does climate come from and whether it should we call people to migrate from maine to Florida every year should are they changing their climates.
robertmthorson: You know how do we define climate, these are the kinds of questions they really enjoy getting into and by this time they're all fired up, because these are all human issues.
robertmthorson: And then we do, how the earth works, and I think you can appreciate this earth system, science and I just use examples.
robertmthorson: And I don't like the spheres, I know this course, this unit is, I know that the whole.
robertmthorson: northeast GSA is organized on spheres, but I don't I don't really like them atmosphere, I think, is just great and the rest are parfait reductionist.
robertmthorson: there's nothing really spiritual and the hydro sphere, in particular, you know it's everywhere and we just learned that that there's enough insta tight.
robertmthorson: enough water in the tight, you know, to give us the oceans three times over, you know So where does water come from you know I mean just the concept of the hydro sphere just doesn't work for me.
robertmthorson: minerals and maybe it's a pet peeve of mine, then, minerals and rocks We know all about that geothermal tectonic we know about that, but you got volcanoes and earthquakes and plate tectonics in one day wow.
robertmthorson: It does solar meteoric you know you get the planetary circulation the ice cores and changes and sea level and the earth has had for atmosphere it's not just one.
robertmthorson: And then, this is where you take like seven chapters in an introductory geology book surface geographies you know basically coastal ice sheet rivers, you know how do you basically do GEO morphology.
robertmthorson: And then surface phylogenetic you realize that the biodiversity and mass extinction of the tree of life they're all they're all related and driven by the geology.
robertmthorson: And you'll notice that here we were doing New England and unit 12 on once I get to unit 12 I introduced at least one of the four concepts, has to do with New England and this allows them to attach a regional sense of place, you know, to the lectures from this point on now.
robertmthorson: The then we basically make over the landscape, this is all that human, environmental impact stuff that you guys know about.
robertmthorson: What are the ancient impacts, you know before before the so called industrial revolution or, for that matter, even before the origin of agriculture and then I just do four of them.
robertmthorson: How have we made over the land and soil how have we made over the rivers and aquifer how have you made over oceans and coasts and energy and air.
robertmthorson: And you know these are huge topics, but we just give them one one unit, or one day each and then the human futures the solar futures are really about climate change.
robertmthorson: You know, rising seas and New England climates the geothermal futures, you know seismic tsunami, we don't have a global problem there, but you do when you start to talk about.
robertmthorson: slower rates, like the you know the great dying at the end of the paleozoic cosmic futures Well, we know the red giants going to happen.
robertmthorson: Radiation bursts are low probability, but they are possible, you know to mess us up.
robertmthorson: incoming asteroids there's a whole thing there and alien visitors, you know i'm not expecting them, but the students love to hear about it, these are futures.
robertmthorson: And then evolutionary are we going to overshoot the planet with our population and consumption is there going to be some kind of apocalypse like the pandemic we're in now.
robertmthorson: What about eugenics is that coming back again you're right, it is.
robertmthorson: But it's more informed than it used to be and how about robots taking over So these are our futures and the students in our courses really like looking back.
robertmthorson: At the present earth from these distant futures and having a little fear is a good thing, because what motivates change are really two things put together one is a little bit of fear and a lot of love.
robertmthorson: You know if you really love something, but you have a fear that it'll go away you're motivated, so you can't have just one, you need to have them both.
robertmthorson: And then we just close the students celebrate at the end, I give them a chance to do whatever they want.
robertmthorson: They might invite a speaker they might have a panel they might just do what the heck I don't know they might have a shouting match I don't even care, I give them the day and then they have a final test and the courses over.
robertmthorson: So I made it Thank you i'm going to exit my screen share and.
robertmthorson: and go back to regular view who that was that was a quickie and a little boring because it's just too much text on a slide when I give lectures and.
robertmthorson: I never put that much text on the slide.
robertmthorson: But I thought you guys could handle the outline without it's 209 i'd like to we've got 51 minutes left.
robertmthorson: I think that what i'd like to do is probably just let's take a break right now four minutes it's 209.
robertmthorson: And four minutes that's 213 i'm going to start a dialogue and a response from each and every one of you, and then we'll have a discussion after that but take for right now, and thank you for your attention.
Paul Olsen: great job.
robertmthorson: Oh thanks Paul yeah it's a very ripe topic because you don't have to be an expert.
Paul Olsen: It helps not to be.
robertmthorson: It does help, not to be, I have a lot of trouble with that.
robertmthorson: Is it's the big ideas that they haven't thought about before.
robertmthorson: Like a rock might have something to do with the climate.
Paul Olsen: I teach I started dinosaur course of Columbia in 1986 yeah and the first year was taught in 250 students yeah which is.
robertmthorson: You know john asked him helped me build a class at uconn I invented a class on you know age of the dinosaurs kind of coincided with Jurassic Park.
robertmthorson: yeah and that filled our classrooms and it was the most popular class they had at uconn in the sciences genet sciences and and I experimented with various models of it and the ecologist didn't want us to teach it yeah.
Paul Olsen: Well, we thought I may in fact steal your entire concept.
robertmthorson: you'd be welcome to and no.
Paul Olsen: i'm serious I really love it, I thought was terrific.
robertmthorson: It, the idea is you, you start with the you, you know there's housekeeping day one.
robertmthorson: Right after after that what the heck is the anthropocene and what do you think it is.
robertmthorson: And I think that that probably in a group of 70 because I piloted the mainly i'm not teaching it I designed the course and we've got three other people teaching it and i'm sort of semi supervising and keeping the course book up to date.
robertmthorson: And and.
Paul Olsen: Well, your chair now so that's that's hard to.
Paul Olsen: do that.
robertmthorson: He has but we're interviewing for a new head, we did today, in fact, I had to leave their their shop talk in order to come and do this thing yeah.
Paul Olsen: passes, if you can find someone competent pass the footballs.
robertmthorson: yeah yeah well, so the I I agreed not to be chair I agreed to be interim chair, because if I agree to be chair, I mean the Dean like that that the Dean would say oh good no problem solved.
robertmthorson: Right get another higher and now we get a chance for a really senior higher.
robertmthorson: You know, with a big research profile portfolio to come.
robertmthorson: and join us, because the first two years of the roughest or you know, like we've been you know it's like the new baby thing.
robertmthorson: You know the first couple years are really rough and then I really streamlines from age, you know you know four to six and so i've been doing the i've been doing the transition.
robertmthorson: You know Lisa we became a department.
Paul Olsen: Right.
robertmthorson: You know, but that's not the same thing as having one you like.
Paul Olsen: No it's not.
robertmthorson: It takes a couple of years to, we have to work out the bylaws so we did that getting back to the anthropocene course.
robertmthorson: i've been teaching introductory geoscience students since 1979 I started and and they're getting more detached than they ever have been even more in the past and and it's it's it's like that you go to an honor student, they have no idea that rock has something to do with a climate.
robertmthorson: And it's that level.
Paul Olsen: I have a I have a concept that I want to introduce this is an appropriate time.
robertmthorson: I think we will bit let's just make sure everybody's back.
robertmthorson: Now you.
robertmthorson: Okay, I hope everybody can hear me, I wanted to wait till 213 let's wait one more minute okay.
robertmthorson: So the structure for the course and the pedagogy what I did was I just studied pedagogy like crazy.
robertmthorson: You know I read like two or three books on teaching i've been teaching forever, but I said how was it, I went back to square one, and I reread some of the stuff that I that I went past, and then I.
robertmthorson: And I kept I really I don't know that i've ever designed a course with very explicit goals in mind.
robertmthorson: You know, like we want this number of students, we want this kind of engagement, we want this kind of rigor we want this audience, you know you take those pieces first and then design to that.
robertmthorson: It really worked for us.
robertmthorson: We have.
robertmthorson: And they they love the idea of color chauvinism.
robertmthorson: sure.
robertmthorson: Why is a green environment better than a blue one.
robertmthorson: But we're at because we're asking the same questions with.
robertmthorson: You know, with human populations, why is.
robertmthorson: brown color better or worse than a than a than a than a white one you know they instantly translate that.
robertmthorson: And it has a lot to do with with biophilia yeah it's kind of our enemy.
robertmthorson: And it's not the fault of the biologists, they just love doing what they're doing right, you know it's it's the fault of the culture that that so devalues how the earthworks in K through 12.
robertmthorson: That when we get them they're already gone, I learned that for students who have underrepresented backgrounds, that after taking introductory geology only about 3% of those people know anybody in our profession.
robertmthorson: After taking it yeah.
robertmthorson: yeah but a psychologist they would know 29% would know a psychologist by name, oh and 13% would know a physicist, and you know and so forth, but we're down in the 2%.
robertmthorson: And that's the issue okay we're at.
robertmthorson: i'm going to pull this back together again i'd like to hear I unmuted Hello from everybody so that I know there's still people out there and the.
audio.
Douglas Reusch: Hello.
robertmthorson: Hello Hello were there were real.
Christine Hatch: Hello.
Paul Olsen: You can also put our thumbs.
robertmthorson: Up yeah okay good, well, I like I like the actual voice now what i'm going to do now is i'm in Paul and Paul had an idea, he wanted to share, but what i'd like to do is give everybody a minute.
robertmthorson: You know, to respond to what I said or add something or criticize, something I can take it, you know something that might not work for you, I don't care what it is, as long as it's it means two things it's personal to you and it's something that our group might benefit from hearing.
robertmthorson: Okay, so you know personal to you, and something our group might benefit from hearing and we'll start with Paul because because I shut him down when he was about to share something.
robertmthorson: and try to.
Paul Olsen: yeah, this is a concept which I think is very important, but it's under under represented in all in most of our sciences and especially in geology and that's the idea that not listen to sounds great, but not all major events have a cause.
Paul Olsen: in the normal way of we think a cause so.
Paul Olsen: In dynamical systems, you have extreme sensitivity to initial conditions and or you can have extreme sensitivity initial conditions, how that translates into this concept is that something like the evolution of human beings, for example.
Paul Olsen: may not be due to anything we would recognize as an actual.
Paul Olsen: cause, yes, then outcome of the dynamical system, which has had some kind of bifurcation event just a trivial thing.
Paul Olsen: And, and it results in a cascade of other effects which we can't map because it's inherently chaotic.
Paul Olsen: So, research and research and we search for a cause and effect when there's no more cars than there is then when you see a dribble down a dental glass and you wonder why it goes left instead of right and what the heck is the cause of that course it has a physical.
Paul Olsen: Yes, but he doesn't have a cause in the sense that there's an event which then has this predictable cause right.
Paul Olsen: And that I think needs to be woven into our ideas of the anthropocene you know, because when we search for causes whir whir whir anthropomorphizing our view of how our lives work, yes, but.
robertmthorson: Well, put history can't be written backwards, you know it it's it's a dynamic chaotic system and earth history and human history are similar in that regard you.
robertmthorson: don't necessarily have one cause, I mean I heard a talk, the other day about about you know the Third Reich, you know why why hitler's success and basically it came down to the same thing there's a series of quirky circumstances aligned in the right place, plus dumb luck.
Paul Olsen: And according person yeah.
robertmthorson: And a quirky person and and that's the kind of explanation that we have going forward, because the students want to know the cause, so they can reverse the cause and it can't be reversed.
robertmthorson: But it doesn't mean we need to be all doom and gloom but the very good place to start is that the earth has a liquid solid you know and gaseous component and let's look at how they exchange people don't think that way.
robertmthorson: So thank you for that Paul.
robertmthorson: that's that's a good sharing and a good example and even on about the right amount of time.
robertmthorson: Anybody who has something to share back, please then we'll have discussion when we're done.
robertmthorson: Is that you Gary are you up.
Gary Gomby: Well yeah, I guess, so I was actually I was going to respond directly to what Paul said because.
Gary Gomby: I I do this explicitly in the class using the logistic growth equation on an excel spreadsheet and you just have them modify.
Gary Gomby: The initial conditions, meaning change our incrementally and the and then you watch the curve change, and you can get a to respond chaotic Lee after you change our past a certain point, and I have them read.
Gary Gomby: The sound of thunder by Ray bradbury.
Paul Olsen: I know that if you do, that same experiment with continuous differential equations that doesn't happen.
Gary Gomby: yeah you know the problem is they can't do percentages so i'm free.
Gary Gomby: Go to that.
Paul Olsen: you'll notice Stella you know the program yeah.
Gary Gomby: If you don't.
Paul Olsen: Tell me that those those chaotic baby doesn't occur.
Gary Gomby: Well, I didn't know that but it's better.
way.
robertmthorson: To work we're already on this already fun I like having colleagues out there who give a damn about the anthropocene, no matter how they pronounce it.
Gary Gomby: But really briefly, I really like what you have to say for because I like to compare how you teach the class to the way I teach it, I mean you include a lot of things I do as well, but in like in different orders and.
Gary Gomby: You know, and I was also really impressed by you know the the pedagogical aspects of it which I struggle with because I, you know don't have the same background as a lot of people so what's always been a challenge right.
robertmthorson: One advice I could give you is I just mentioned it to Paul before we came back together again.
robertmthorson: Is that i've been teaching forever and I thought you know you get to be an old fart you think you know what you're going to do.
robertmthorson: And you're an expert I said hell with that when I decided to design this course, I went back and I read several brand new books on pedagogy.
robertmthorson: You know the things that i've missed and because there's been a lot of good work on it, and that, with that in mind, I decided we have we have four or five objectives there's a population target that I want.
robertmthorson: there's the class size that I want there's the rigor that I want.
robertmthorson: And there's the handicapped population, if you like, meaning they can't read or they forget how to do this, or the things that they that they can't do that they should be able to do, and a lot of this.
robertmthorson: And handicap may not be the right word but it's like there's a deficit in concentration.
robertmthorson: and depth and shallowness and so that's why I don't have lectures I have concepts and there's 88 of them divided into 22 units divided into five modules and they're anxious.
robertmthorson: You know, so I basically thought about all of these having read about it and then designed a course around the student instead of the subject.
Gary Gomby: yeah It means, I have to redesign the class again so.
Gary Gomby: So.
robertmthorson: let's carry on anybody else.
robertmthorson: yeah Janet.
Janet Wert Crampton: What kinds of reactions, do you get from the friends and families up here enthusiastic students.
robertmthorson: Well that's a good question for you, since you're going to be teaching in in problems.
robertmthorson: Do you hear anything of disbelief.
robertmthorson: Basic basically the the the over 70 crowd you know, is really quite conservative that that that the world the earth works in this way, but you know their birth predate the great acceleration mean we really are in a different world, beginning in the mid 20th century.
robertmthorson: And how do they how do they react I don't have a very good data set on that I do know that some parents are very engaged with my students it's like the dinner table conversation and I presume that goes with grandparents if they're there too, but there's a blank stare for a lot of them.
robertmthorson: You know, and I think that the thing is that this group here at this you guys don't have troubles with your camera on.
robertmthorson: You know it's so hard for me to have my students get all of their cameras on, you have to really work at them and I do that because somehow we've redefined what it's like to be together and that doesn't include a visual.
robertmthorson: So I did I gave you a long way to answer there i'm sorry I don't have a better one who's up next.
Paul Olsen: To raise his hand Joe are you just muted yourself.
Joe Butch: i'm still working on technology coming the jowls you're teaching jazzy with a bias at the story is in the rock the rock tells a straight from the very origin of the Rack up until the present day and and one of your modules you said no racks and it's certain catch my attention but.
Joe Butch: I think I see the context of that you're looking at the other perspectives.
Joe Butch: Rather than that the jealousy.
robertmthorson: The main point of that is that most people are obsessed with culture, you know whether it's Harry and megan.
robertmthorson: Right or whether it's a you know Biden versus trump or whatever you know they they sell them let their brains wander out of the human sphere of you know self obsession.
robertmthorson: Okay, but those who do escape that take it down to the level of ecology.
robertmthorson: You know, they tend to be you know, greenies or they tend to be concerned for the earth and they you know they know that human societies are supported by something.
robertmthorson: And that thing is ecology or agriculture, if you like, and that's where most of them stop and what i'm trying to do is get my students to ask where does ecology come from.
robertmthorson: You know well, it comes from rock you know and where does atmosphere come from it comes from rock I mean what is the ocean, except the condensed volatiles.
robertmthorson: You know that were boiled out of Iraq and on and on, so i'm basically in terms of history and in terms of hierarchy i'm saying no rock.
robertmthorson: I mean, I like rocks you know, but no rocks know ecosystems know culture one leads to the next leads to the next and that's true.
robertmthorson: Regardless of paul's disclaimer you know that there's chaotic tendencies, you know you can't you can't get an atmosphere, you know full of water, without steaming and out of the rocks.
Paul Olsen: Well, unless it comes from space.
robertmthorson: Unless it comes from space and is.
robertmthorson: Most steamed out or melted out yes.
Paul Olsen: there's enough, energy and the impact yeah.
Paul Olsen: yeah and what do you do when.
robertmthorson: You know the Earth is so hot that you can hold a drop of water right, you know I mean.
Paul Olsen: Like Venus.
robertmthorson: yeah so what happens, you know you got to cool the earth down and students, these are really basic and very straightforward ideas.
robertmthorson: So don't get me wrong, I like rocks that's the that's the origin of it, in fact, I have a short version of earth history that they really like to hear.
robertmthorson: And that is that it starts with rock and then it goes to air, you know that's the steaming out of the volatiles so it's rock air and then its water.
robertmthorson: You know, because you condense it and then it's life because you need Water for Life and then it's intelligence question mark.
robertmthorson: You know so that's the whole history of Earth is your rock air, water life intelligence question mark and you can quibble about the origins of the solar system and the earth, but you know that works okay at the level i'm teaching it.
Douglas Reusch: And that was fear of concept yeah.
robertmthorson: Okay Okay, we could do that.
robertmthorson: i'm not there i'm not with a shirt and noaa sphere, but.
robertmthorson: I like.
robertmthorson: No go ahead, what are you going to share then.
Douglas Reusch: Oh i'm going to go back to pushing the strategic plan that we wrote.
Douglas Reusch: I basically you kind of start on the back cover.
Douglas Reusch: I tried to distill it to two important graphs one is CO2 through the glacial interglacial cycles and then the spike that sort of captures the problem yep and the future is trying to get net emissions down soon and our strategic plan is for next five years.
Douglas Reusch: We really might want to have this as a focus of the plan so.
robertmthorson: i'll i'm going to share something here with you now, it has to do with that diagram of carbon through the time.
robertmthorson: It because we talked briefly about Henry thoreau is as some of my scholarship there I just read an entire big journal article about thoreau and climate change.
robertmthorson: You know, and it was basically about using his philosophies to solve it, he basically was worried about another Ice Age coming, you know that was his big fear, but you don't even read it in a skilled professional journal article, you know, the idea that it could go the other way.
robertmthorson: Right, you know and that's so important that this brilliant thinker, you know, for very good reason was way ahead of his peers and.
Paul Olsen: We what would we do if natural in quotes without without the anthropocene means that the biota sequesters enough carbon to drive this into.
robertmthorson: Your.
Paul Olsen: Other snowball Earth.
Is that a good thing.
robertmthorson: I.
Douglas Reusch: think is a great story.
Douglas Reusch: From a George denton that aren't know about back probably around 1970 and some of his colleagues were concerned about this, the future cooling.
Douglas Reusch: So they wrote a really nice letter and they sent it to President Nixon I never heard back and then maybe months and months and months later, they got this letter from the president's office asking for their opinion because they were the experts.
robertmthorson: i'll share a story there what full circle yeah.
robertmthorson: there's a there's a really nice in 1973 that a conference at brown university.
robertmthorson: And it was about that very fear you know all the Paleo climate people, because if you look at the.
robertmthorson: Look at the pleistocene you know it's pretty obvious that most of it is colder than today, you know that we're in a in an inner glacial that may have already turned the corner and that was so straightforward, you know, in the in the early 70s.
robertmthorson: That people were worried about you know the onset and it turned out to be complicated by a lot of other factors, but, but people were still concerned about that as late as 1973 and four and it all turned around by 1979.
Paul Olsen: broker said, is the are we headed into a global warming.
Douglas Reusch: One other thing to say just following up on what Paul said about dynamical systems.
Douglas Reusch: I had a list of recommendations for each of our divisions, so you know what i'm thinking about.
Douglas Reusch: Instead of.
Douglas Reusch: course like yours is institutions that pursue this philosophy so for mathematics and computer science, the recommendation is democratize dynamical.
Douglas Reusch: mathematics and you can do this with things like Stella so basic understanding and ability, should be a graduation requirement.
Douglas Reusch: Work with the scientists to develop hands on concrete pedagogy that works that's a big failure of the mathematicians is they, they don't go hands on thanks very much.
robertmthorson: yeah okay well pedagogy is really becoming more important, I used to think that that people would just I mean, I made the mistake i'll confess i've been a professor, for a very long time.
robertmthorson: And it was a good reader I was an avid readers a kid I just devoured books and I just you know I made the mistake as a professor.
robertmthorson: That I didn't want to go over the material that I signed in the textbook so I assigned textbook readings just thinking that students would read that and we would use our time more productively to discuss, you know fun things.
robertmthorson: And, and it wasn't that they weren't doing it, they had trouble doing it, you know they weren't readers the way I did so I I ruined, you know 15 years worth of.
robertmthorson: perfectly good courses by assuming that they were getting materials in the reading and they're not and and and I have raised four kids with my wife, you know they're they're all gone.
robertmthorson: Right and i've watched all of them, they were all weird in different ways, and I watched how they learned and I realized that our students are our real challenges to reach.
robertmthorson: And i'm old enough that I gotta you know rethink it and reread it in order to reach them they're not the same as they used to be.
robertmthorson: And they're certainly not like me.
robertmthorson: You know, I was just like a pig in heaven when I enrolled I basically basically had real trouble getting out of high school.
robertmthorson: But once I got into college, it was like an all you can eat Buffet, and I just went nuts and I realized how different I was from the others, and yet I made the narcissistic mistake of assuming that students behave like I did until I got old enough and mature enough.
robertmthorson: So I don't know where that came from who else wants to respond.
robertmthorson: By the way, i've made more mistakes, I think, than just about in teaching, but you know I fixed a lot of them.
Paul Olsen: that's how you learn.
robertmthorson: I know, when my first year teaching, I had a lecture course and there were people misbehaving in the back of the room and I gave them an ultimatum if you don't knock it off i'm leaving.
robertmthorson: I was a.
robertmthorson: brand new instructor one weekend to it and I tell you within an hour, I was in the dean's office.
robertmthorson: I felt like a high school give the guts into the principal.
robertmthorson: So who's going to share.
Paul Olsen: So i've had a lot of in a coven time now we restructured a course that has a lot of students in it and remove the short answer exams because it's so easy to cheat.
Paul Olsen: And instead have sort of reflections and essays and things, but all of those more qualitative.
Paul Olsen: forms of assessment of which we have a lot of smaller ones, so the individual risk is low, the.
Paul Olsen: it's very hard to grade them objectively and the ta is have a tremendous amount of trouble, and there are so many of them to to grade.
Paul Olsen: With 80 students and 68 the teachers are just constantly grading stuff all the time nonstop.
Paul Olsen: And it's all qualitative and then we have a great inflation problem that goes with that, because you see it it's hard to assess and and and and properly.
Paul Olsen: Right.
robertmthorson: I know well, we hit, we have the same problem, one thing that I do and i've learned is that you know you assign a reading and hope they can get through it on one of those three levels.
robertmthorson: And then you write quiz questions, but what I do is my quizzes only six minutes long and it's five questions so you have to be able to answer them right away, so you have to know it.
robertmthorson: And it's almost too quick for them to cheat.
Paul Olsen: So we use the opposite format, we have them take the quiz until they get all the answers right yeah.
robertmthorson: Well, they get to take a second shot if they want.
robertmthorson: They get to have a second shot if they want, but you can time it like you have to do it within an hour, so they can go say otherwise, if you give them too long, what they do is they know they don't read a thing, and they just go in and research each question on Google right.
robertmthorson: So what I would like to say is one thing we've done effectively as the writing prompt I spent a.
robertmthorson: very surprising successfully found a little piece of software called quickly jot and what they can do is they can they can type you know when you've got a you can draw you can draw and type in sketch.
robertmthorson: and put a little text box in it before you hit submit they love it, because what you can say is draw something that represents the idea that.
robertmthorson: You know that i'm asking for on the writing assessment and some people will have beautiful drawings, you know very, very engaged that you can see that they know it.
robertmthorson: Some will make a map, you know, some will some will annotate an illustration, they can do all kinds of things with it and they're easy to grade because you have less text.
Douglas Reusch: what's the name of it again.
robertmthorson: it's called quickly jot Qu ic K l y J O T and it just it's just something attached to blackboard that I, I tried using and it works.
robertmthorson: And the idea is you know I mean you've got a map behind you, you know it's an apple he looks like an appalachian origin map or something like that I can't see it all up nope there you go Nova Scotia well, I was close Newfoundland Nova Scotia.
robertmthorson: But the basic idea is that that's a graphic that you could draw which would show me that you understand something about that and I don't have to read the text, I can see it in a glimpse.
robertmthorson: In.
robertmthorson: A grading like that can be very simple, it can be you know 100% or 50% you know me, you can be really quick on that we've experimented with different ways of doing that.
Paul Olsen: Do you have much discussion on choices of the marker the demarcation of the anthropocene so we had a big discussion about the orbis spike and mix of the new and old worlds and the the you know, the death of 50 million new world indigenous peoples.
robertmthorson: yeah there's a lot of.
robertmthorson: there's there's a lot of discussion over that and fundamentally where it goes, is that the the true epic has to be global, by definition.
Paul Olsen: Well, CO2, its effect on CO2 yeah.
robertmthorson: But it, you know how do you define it and.
robertmthorson: There are lots of regional impact, and then there are.
Paul Olsen: The orbis spike is a drop in CO2.
Paul Olsen: Yes, coincides with the reforestation after the death and the.
robertmthorson: designers yes.
Paul Olsen: And then, so that shows up in proxies of CO2.
Paul Olsen: Yes, and I suppose to matter and potentially in carbonates CO2, although i'm not sure the time scale of that is appropriate.
robertmthorson: It shows up and it's a marker but but, for me, we mentioned it, but it's not dramatic enough to base an epic on it so.
Paul Olsen: What do you want to base the epic on what do you like this.
robertmthorson: Well, I don't have a strategy type marker anywhere, except, it would be the plutonium to 39 spike you know.
Paul Olsen: For sure half life, though wearable geological.
robertmthorson: I know that but it's it's there for the for the length of time that my students care about and then.
robertmthorson: Other things.
robertmthorson: You know it gets them to pay attention, I understand that it's short on that timescale, but.
robertmthorson: But what you can do is you can begin to connect it with.
robertmthorson: plastics and concrete and everything else you know.
Paul Olsen: doing a billion years, and you know we won't be able to see it.
robertmthorson: I don't.
Paul Olsen: recognize that problem talk about hubris.
robertmthorson: yeah well that's The other thing is the anthropocene, how can we name an epic after ourselves, you know it's just self glorification you know there's these arguments that students will get involved in that they're quite interested in.
robertmthorson: yeah they don't know they're interested until you start talking about it.
robertmthorson: Because on that spike you referred to the order spike if you.
robertmthorson: If you realize that oh my God, you know if you if you have a drop and CO2 because of extra seat quest ration and you can see it around the globe in a variety of records that's interesting, I have no idea I mean the basic student response to to to my class.
robertmthorson: When they leave is every day is oh my God, I had no idea oh my God, I had no idea I mean it's the standard refrain.
robertmthorson: yeah and we're not talking fancy stuff here we're talking basic you know, like like climates come from underground right.
Paul Olsen: Oh here's what I love to tell people that there's rock under everything.
Paul Olsen: They look to with a complete.
Paul Olsen: Blank expression.
robertmthorson: I know.
robertmthorson: You tell them the continents are floating higher and they go they don't float they saying.
robertmthorson: Because we're not talking foundation geoscience we made that decision we're not going to try and and take our intro geology class where we want people to know things and turn it into this kind of Oh, I have no idea.
robertmthorson: You know, and so, so it was a blessing in disguise, they rejected they rejected everything we had.
robertmthorson: In it, and you know we just said, well damn you were going to figure out a way to do it and now they're now we've got really enrollments are really looking good and we're teaching an honor section of this, you know, in a small group harkness discussion and that's just as successful.
robertmthorson: And i'm not saying, where the greatest thing or anything we just hit it right, you know we hit the timing right, you know I mean the ideas in my head are no different from a lot of people out there.
robertmthorson: But we put it together in a way, and the timing was right, and the response was right to make it be a very successful course for our you know our beginning department.
Paul Olsen: I think one of the biggest effects we can have as scientists, is to teach students in an attractive way how science works and how the earthworks yep How are they going to go out there going to be politicians are going to be lawyers they're going to be anything but scientists.
robertmthorson: that's right.
robertmthorson: And what I tried to tell.
Paul Olsen: Your time trying to make more scientists.
robertmthorson: yeah I agree and the goal of the courses to make you a more effective planetary citizen yep that's The goal of the whole course is to make you a more effective planetary citizen, then they say how the answer is well start with knowing of the earth works.
robertmthorson: You know, basically because we're the causes.
Christine Hatch: want to jump in there for a second for well, while you're on that topic I want to discuss these hats, I just wanted to.
Christine Hatch: say I really liked the approach that you went into the course with a saying it's really important to know how the earth work as the premise.
Christine Hatch: For the importance of geology and I think I think in some ways as a discipline we've lost our way and attracting students by sticking to the old models and I think it's a really terrific new model.
Christine Hatch: And we it umass have sort of the we've done the opposite transformation we've relegated our geographers off to some corner.
Christine Hatch: And and have the geologists running the show, and I think I think we could certainly work better with our geographers and make more of that partnership with courses like this yeah so I really appreciated that framing of the course yeah Thank you a lot of its framing.
robertmthorson: And it's framing not just around the content, but what the purpose and what Paul said was just you know I mean it's just spot on.
robertmthorson: And what you said it's it's I want you to be a more effective planetary citizen, because they want to be a more effective planetary they just don't know the geology has anything to do with it.
robertmthorson: And then you say well what's your what's your concern what's your biggest concern and they always say, climate change or someone else might say ocean acidification.
robertmthorson: or someone might say species extinction and you say well guess what there's one thing that holds all three of those.
robertmthorson: All three of the big problems and that thing is called the anthropocene and in space it's the it's the entire globe, because that's how you define epics and in time it's the it's the anthropocene.
robertmthorson: We discuss when it might begin but that's less important, you know, the agreement is less important than the discussion.
robertmthorson: So thank you for that anybody else.
robertmthorson: 42 we still got.
robertmthorson: We still got you know 19 minutes left, so I haven't heard from a lot of you let's hear, at least from everybody.
Mike Wizevich: All right, well.
Mike Wizevich: I noticed, maybe some purpose, he really didn't do much on the about energy, you know what I think most people would associate geologists with, but I see that as part of the underlying problem.
Mike Wizevich: yeah and I would think perhaps.
Mike Wizevich: I don't know if you make students do introspection and think about how how they use energy like I I taught a environmental geology quick my first course at rutgers Newark.
Mike Wizevich: And one of the exercise, I had the students do, which was a real eye opener for them and for me, was to record throughout the day how much they threw out, you know if you can do the same thing with energy how much energy they have you ever seen this switch.
Mike Wizevich: Energy alliance from University of Texas.
know.
Mike Wizevich: it's a big thing it started out with a DVD and they go through all the different energy and it's it's it's a narrated by the head of the.
Mike Wizevich: The survey the Bureau of economic geology but it comes to the conclusion of the end that we're not going to switch to green energy very quickly.
Mike Wizevich: But what you can do now is is be more efficient and and don't waste so much, but if you look at the numbers and the numbers that we use as Americans compared to the rest of the world it's just it's.
Mike Wizevich: it's it's a crime, so I just.
Mike Wizevich: wonder how you deal with that or, if at all.
robertmthorson: Yet we deal with it a lot, but it comes in a little pieces it comes in one of these writing prompts you know, like.
robertmthorson: You know what have you done to reduce energy, I question what the word carbon footprint is.
robertmthorson: You know and and another writing prompt question that because you know, a footprint is transient you know in our carbon is anything but that.
robertmthorson: yeah you know, and so I think that's a dangerous word to use when you talk about your carbon footprint because footprints are transient on earth.
robertmthorson: And I really got onto this when I saw the MARS footprint, you know, like 4050 years later it's just as fresh as it used to be, you know with an atmosphere, they don't last very long.
robertmthorson: We have the unit called energy and air, you know we have a unit on climate realism, you know we have a unit on on.
robertmthorson: Land make you know make overs or you know, basically, you can modify land or you can use it, or you know, like use it up.
robertmthorson: You know, in the case of mining and and it comes into those pieces we just didn't it's only in in one unit, energy and air and we talk about that, but most of them are have learned an awful lot about energy use and consumption so as long as I make sure they know that their energy hogs.
robertmthorson: In the course or likely to be I don't I don't dwell on the on the many charts that show up.
robertmthorson: In you know all over the place.
robertmthorson: They get them everywhere else yeah but I mean I you're right I, it is in the course but it's not featured as a major module.
Mike Wizevich: I mean you know I teach an energy science and technology class, which is an upper level class yeah and first thing I tell them is that it's all economics right.
Mike Wizevich: Energy drives the world.
Mike Wizevich: And in our society and dollar speak, and if you want to learn about energy subscribe to the New York Times every time every morning that's me old fashioned that way.
Mike Wizevich: Every day, especially in the business section there's an article related to energy that's just.
Mike Wizevich: What it's all about yep.
Gary Gomby: So I get this a little bit differently, I spent quite a bit of time.
Gary Gomby: Talking about human population growth, and you know the rates of change and, specifically, where people live.
Gary Gomby: And then we you know do a class on ecological footprint, so people can really see you know their footprint.
Gary Gomby: Using that website, which is in the students usually yep no are very impressed, so to speak, but when they find out that you know they're using three or four or five earth's, so to speak, and I, you know the energy component.
Gary Gomby: is important but it's not a dry it's not an overriding aspect of way I structure the class it's.
Gary Gomby: spent a lot more time talking about planetary boundaries and I spend a lot of time talking about how we acquire our food, I spent a lot of talk time talking about.
Gary Gomby: agro ecosystems and the conversion of you know undeveloped land to you know production ecosystems and the supply chain is global supply chains and the idea of telecom point.
Gary Gomby: And the example that I use, which I think is very, very effective and powerful is to look at the link between Chinese demand for pork and.
Gary Gomby: soy grow, you know sweat production in Brazil, and you can talk the demands report in China is met by deforestation in Brazil, Argentina there's conversion and grasslands here in the United States for soy production and.
Gary Gomby: This whole notion of Tele coupling, which is an idea that was developed, you know, some time ago, but it's a very powerful way of trying to show students that.
Gary Gomby: You know the food they eat the choices they make on a daily basis are globally linked through these vast supply chains.
Gary Gomby: and individual choice is really important, we do a lecture on Conflict Minerals I mean I talk a lot about.
Gary Gomby: It you know equity issues and environmental justice issues, because I regard them as absolutely inseparable from the science.
Gary Gomby: You know, climate change, you know migration sea level rise air pollution, all these things disproportionately impact communities of color or the least.
Gary Gomby: You know capable or able people on the planet to defend themselves against these insults lot, most of which are caused by us, or the developed world.
Gary Gomby: And you know.
Gary Gomby: You can't I find it impossible to.
Gary Gomby: ignore that those issues.
robertmthorson: well.
Gary Gomby: And I think they're really, really important part of this whole discussion about the anthropocene is way more than climate change is just so much more than climate change.
robertmthorson: Let me just say that I completely agree and i'm glad you brought that up and enumerated it that's where i'm at it's way more than climate change.
robertmthorson: You know there's the thing what's The thing that holds all of those things, including climate change and that's the anthropocene.
robertmthorson: And then and and in terms of the equity and in terms of the pelican connections and all of that.
robertmthorson: that's that's a that's mentioned in my course in those units and those but it's not dwelled on because that's just a curriculum choice you know at our particular university they get course after course on that.
robertmthorson: or it's in a lot of introduction courses, because I studied the syllabus and the other courses and if there's a lot of exposure to it for most of the students I downplayed it and instead focused on earth's physicality and in the the the well, which includes, of course, the biota.
robertmthorson: And I agree with everything you said and i'm glad that the rest of us who are still here were able to share in that.
robertmthorson: I know that was a theme when I went to your session in maine and learn from it and brought it home and important some of it, I was in the process of designing a class at that point.
robertmthorson: yeah it's the right.
Gary Gomby: Nice yeah it's I mean look at I changed the class almost every time I teach it all alter something or break or changing depending on you know some it could be the latest news, so to speak.
robertmthorson: But let me just give you an example of something we've had five regional campuses and they have you know when we were not a department, we didn't really have much going on there.
robertmthorson: And usually they'll be they've been teaching, you know the Stanford branch and the heart for branch would teach introductory geology, but we have nothing to do with it.
robertmthorson: And when we became a department and I reached out and tried to make these connections and then we were able to encode the offer sections of different courses to the regional campuses at no cost.
robertmthorson: when the time came for them to come back to us and say what we really want is your anthropocene class, you know, and we want someone to teach it here in person, because this, you know that the students caught wind of it online and now we're scrambling to find people to teach it.
robertmthorson: And that's a good problem to have but it's coming from them, in other words it's it's we're on the supply side, not on the demand side, once you once you poke the bear.
Gary Gomby: You know, look I don't know what the experience has been for the other folks who are still here, but it seems to me.
Gary Gomby: That.
Gary Gomby: Unless God so unless the intro geoscience classes are more trans disciplinary or interdisciplinary it's a problem I think in getting students to.
Gary Gomby: To understand that geoscience has the answers to, like many of the problems, the world is facing.
Gary Gomby: And, by the same token, all these things are you know all tied together the socio economic aspects are linked to the geoscience aspects and probably for a lot of people they're not comfortable talking about stuff that's not.
Gary Gomby: You know geology don't necessarily have a background might not have the inclination to learn about it, I mean it's it's hard to teach it and anthropocene class it's It really is it's not it's it's.
Gary Gomby: it's hard to not the same as as like environmental geology it's not the same as intro to.
Gary Gomby: agree, you know it's it's different.
Gary Gomby: about it.
Gary Gomby: Really holistically I don't like that word but that's really what's required.
Gary Gomby: To different ways of thinking about it.
robertmthorson: to teach it right, you want to do just what you did you want to teach it all, because it is all one big thing.
Gary Gomby: Right.
robertmthorson: The problem is, we can't we made a categorical decision to focus on the earthly component of that because we just can't do it all, but it would just prison, then other departments would be saying what hey you can't teach our.
content.
robertmthorson: They do that all the time.
Paul Olsen: come in, have you thought of ways of dealing with the question and in all systems, the the trade offs between growth and steady state so so much of economies depend upon growth.
Paul Olsen: versus steady state and that's a big problem.
robertmthorson: Huge it's it's it's it's just so anti ecological I mean this like rule number one ecosystems, as we think of them are in steady state policy, you know and change but there, so how can you have an ecosystem that's not in steady state it's not a system it's trending to something else.
Paul Olsen: But could be a non state state, but it could fluctuate up and down which will not be depending on growth, except negative if it's negative and positive growth it's a different story, but if it's all positive growth it's impossible.
robertmthorson: No, I agree, one of the things I tried to do is break that down into different kinds of equilibrium.
robertmthorson: You know, like there's a static equilibrium it's the pencil sitting on the desk yeah but you know viewed from the earth it's not static it's going up and down with the tights you know.
robertmthorson: But the pencil on the desk is static and then a dynamic equilibrium, I mean a steady state is when it wiggles up and down, you know it's like the surface of a stream.
Paul Olsen: And bounds.
robertmthorson: You know it basically oscillates around us around a stable mean that's a steady state, and if you tilt the mean and you make it be a trending mean.
robertmthorson: Then you have oscillations around a trending mean that's a dynamic equilibrium and then, when you have thresholds that are crossed, then we call it a Meta stable equilibrium.
robertmthorson: And so, then you get them to understand the concept of dynamic Meta stable equilibrium, you know, then they've already thought about time spans.
robertmthorson: And and in in very deep ways, but it would take a swear would take an entire lecture period, you know just to develop that concept yeah logistic curve how about just going back to an exponential curve.
Paul Olsen: I know.
robertmthorson: You know how many people in your audience understand an exponential.
Paul Olsen: curve about.
Paul Olsen: How about a linear have been aligned.
Gary Gomby: ya know I do, that I that I start with that you know linear growth an exponential growth.
Gary Gomby: Which is to growth and that's What, then, we work into population change and things like that, but Paul if you're asking you know the bigger question, how do you have you know, a sustainable future, if you know, an economic system is predicated on endless growth.
Gary Gomby: yeah that's kind of a big question right but.
robertmthorson: And I also think that our students, would like to have no conflict, you know, but the idea of a species is to expand its range and distribution and success, you know, and if it's not held back in some way it just keeps going yeah.
Gary Gomby: that's why ilan is going to Mars.
Paul Olsen: I suppose also nuances that students don't get so we all understand the horrors of the well we don't all understand, but many of us understand the horrors of the industrial animal agriculture.
robertmthorson: yeah yeah.
Paul Olsen: But, few people understand that, from the genes points of view.
Paul Olsen: Pig oh yeah are incredibly successful they've been educated humans unbelievably.
Paul Olsen: But from the individuals point of view it's it's it's a nightmare, but from the genes points of view it's a fantastic thing yeah.
robertmthorson: Right well that's our first five units are sort of like our intentionally embracing concept like that to jar they're thinking.
robertmthorson: You know in have geology touch on each of them in some way but it's the jarring that's important initially because I don't know where.
robertmthorson: I mean I don't want to sound pejorative but, but their world is not my world you know their their social media world is there.
robertmthorson: they're floating around the social media that's that's not my world I like this idea because we're actually talking to the same people you know, for almost two hours.
robertmthorson: You know i'd I virtually.
Paul Olsen: You know the thing.
robertmthorson: That is is.
Paul Olsen: is a reality for them.
robertmthorson: I know, and I watched this happen, I watched this happen, we had a.
robertmthorson: It was a shocker to me because we raise kids and then they were gone and then we sponsored a high school student from Norway for the entire year.
robertmthorson: And, and all of my kids they wake up and they go pee right and this.
robertmthorson: this young woman would wake up and do all the social media stuff you know jumping up and down like the two year old that can come in stop playing you know they just addicted to it, and then they would go to the bathroom and I noticed how.
Paul Olsen: They do things at the same time.
I don't.
robertmthorson: Think so hey.
robertmthorson: Burton has got agenda we're closing in on the end of this no.
Bill Burton: Thank you, I had to order up till now, and so I listened to everything I couldn't see anything but I had a couple quick comments one i'm a usgs emeritus retired I don't have any students but I I like to teach popular mostly astronomy.
Bill Burton: classes public, but I want to get branch out and I I my dream eventually is evolution, but I, I just wanted to say about the climate change it's such a compelling.
Bill Burton: story, and when I read Roman and others, the fact that CO2 and the cretaceous with got up to 1000 ppm and then it's been cooling ever since because India smashed into Asia.
Bill Burton: I mean, really.
Paul Olsen: that's that is one idea bill.
Paul Olsen: that's why.
Bill Burton: But anyway, and then I read recently, and this was shocking that you know as far as restoring the pre industrial CO2 well that ship sailed 100,000 years ago we might get back to 241 or 280 will never get back to 240, which means the next ice age is delayed at least 100,000.
Bill Burton: You know.
Bill Burton: I think people can understand these things I think it's a great story yeah other point I want to make the lady.
Bill Burton: From umass talked about how you know there's kind of a thing between geology and geography and it struck me because I know.
Bill Burton: I know some GIs people at umass that and GIs is very hot right now everyone wants a certificate and my my yes, I got it and everything it strikes me that'd be a perfect place to interface with geography GIs through the anthropocene.
robertmthorson: You know.
Bill Burton: we're mapping these changes, real time and using that data for good and it I would I would propose your next move should be to make inroads with those guys and do a joint anthropocene GIs course well.
robertmthorson: We thought about.
robertmthorson: Of course, you know I worked.
Christine Hatch: For that, and the Faculty voted as the majority that that was going to be our next higher so you're right on track.
robertmthorson: We have a GIs guy in our in our program to, and we have a growing we have we have a problem, the GI the geography department decided to offer a geography major energy is major and everybody went to the GIs major.
robertmthorson: You know that's just the way it's going.
robertmthorson: To be are now we are now.
robertmthorson: Out of time I don't know whether the whether the GSA guys are going to kick us off or not I can sit around and visit for longer, but I think that the argument was that I think Gary had a field trip somebody at a.
Gary Gomby: field trip to go to so.
robertmthorson: We needed to quit you know, on time, and you got your field trip that's cool.
robertmthorson: chapter, so what I want to do is just say that what i'm going to do is follow this up with an email to everybody and i'll send you my introduction, so you can read sort of where i'm coming from in a text and i'm.
robertmthorson: Trying to work on a reading list that's shareable.
Paul Olsen: Well, as I was going to just say, if you could please put the piano pedagogy books that you found most useful on that list I.
Gary Gomby: Think guitar.
robertmthorson: yeah okay.
Gary Gomby: it's a.
robertmthorson: it's a new Harvard press book about one year old.
robertmthorson: it's called the course you never took or something like that put it.
Paul Olsen: put it on the list.
robertmthorson: yeah i'll do that i'll do that i'm I got a big list but it's kind of an ugly list you know it works, because the students never asked for the list so I never had to pull it together.
robertmthorson: And I have a lot of things going on, so I tried to put together a list this morning and I didn't finish it so i'll give you guys a shortlist but that'll definitely be on it.
robertmthorson: And the writing prompts with drawings.
robertmthorson: engage that side of the brain man it works.
robertmthorson: For them.
robertmthorson: alrighty well, thank you very much Gary, especially for inspiring me about three years ago.
robertmthorson: When I was debating what to do and for all of the the active conversation let's hope we can stay in touch with that that that little little group thing and see who peels away from it, but i'll do my best, thank you all for coming and i'm.
robertmthorson: glad you got something out of this That was my plan.
Mike Wizevich: Thanks.
Paul Olsen: Great thanks for your ideas.