Last day of classes

I've had a relatively easy week, one in fact, where my level of tiredness after a very long hard semester has punched through the wall, and I've come out the other side. Although I'm punchy and my naturally high level of British working class cynicism and sarcasm has ballooned, I feel like a marathon runner who finished the course, albeit in the middle of the pack.

My semester days were spent alternately...

1) trying to teach as well as I could considering that I teach few courses where the student actually believes he or she wants to learn the material,

2) trying to keep up with the service component of my job which, frankly, could be a full time job for about three or four folks with my particular expertise right about now in the great State of Maine,

3) trying to keep up with the rapidly deploying green research and green stimulus efforts of the federal government, which have already transformed the field of climate change and energy sustainability dramatically,

and 4) assisting as best I could with the curriculum renewal effort at Unity College, which promises to release some of the latent promise that I see in this small Maine school.

If this sounds like an energy reformer's dream come true, it was, but it has been hard work, and having to jump from one area to another and multitask well has defeated me at times.

Some of this was rewarding. Some of it was merely frustrating. Some was pure murder.

High on my list of rewarding outcomes:

My guess is that a little more than half of my probationers class will fly right off academic probation with much higher GPAs of 2.25 or above. These are students who failed their first semester primarily becuase they couldn't summon up motivation to perform in college once they were cut loose from parents and from high school. Of the other half, two young men have dropped out to try other careers in the military -- a successful outcome as far as I'm concerned since they will both thrive in that environment, while they were failing college due to testosterone poisoning. So around a 70% positive outcome, maybe 80% when a couple of students who are at the margin try their chances on appeal. This is a pretty good overall result, since these students were at high risk for a very challenging early-life failure: getting kicked out of college. I don't take much credit for it, since I was just their drill sergeant, but I am very glad to see it.

Meanwhile, my regular students in my three other courses seem to have grasped the primary concepts of environmental sustainability and environmental leadership that we were trying to grasp. The junior-level environmental sustainability courses are always difficult simply because a large number of the male students in the several land management and protection majors go into it with a bad attitude, gained primarily I think from listening to conservative talk drivel and the general anti-green buzz among young male rural hunters, fishermen, gun nuts and so on. It takes a lot of good-tempered study of hard facts about climate and energy to overcome this attitude problem, which material these guys have no patience to learn properly in the first place because they are generally not very academic.

I tell them I don't care what they think on their own time, and I am not out to take their guns and pick-up trucks away, but in my class they are responsible for learning the material. Most of them pull out a C or B and a couple even get A's.

Luckily, the overall federal science push on climate and energy these last three-four years has become much more focused and coherent, and now the Obama administration has pushed it to the fore, the general package of theory in energy related to stabilization wedges is now well worked out and logical and satisfying to most students who are willing to put in the effort to learn it, however conservative.

For an overview, check out US Department of Energy Patricia Dehmer's slideshow available here:

http://www.science.doe.gov/SC-2/Deputy_Director-speeches-presentations.htm

As for my outreach and service work, the high points included completing my first full scale community wind assessment for our local high school. This is the culmination of two-three years effort to learn the basic and applied science of wind assessment, and very satisfying. Just recently I was able to add another string to that bow with a new application in open-source Geographical Information Systems for wind analysis using the freebie Q-GIS platform. I now have an excellent GIS database for wind sites in the state of Maine, sufficient that, combined with my standard Excel wind analysis spreadsheets, I can get a basic wind power production estimate using the NREL's 200 meter resolution data set for any site in the state and any turbine make and model in less than an hour's work. Since the Q-GIS system is free, any amateur planner or Town official in the state with time and patience and a fast computer connection could do the same. One new service project I plan to do soon is work up a web page with links and instructions for using Q-GIS in wind and other community planning efforts in-state, or elsewhere in the country.

I tried desperately to keep up with the stimulus package and other longer-lasting federal policy change efforts on climate change and energy, and although it defeated me at times because it was moving too fast, I think I have a good idea of the main thrusts and where the best spots are for Unity College to assist. Although as a small private we are not quite as likely as other colleges to get large amounts of stimulus, we can still get some for our energy education and service work, and we need to know what the policy thrust is to serve students best in their education. And we will likely get more students, especially for our Sustainability Design and Technology degree.

Again, I recommend Pat Dehmer's slide show.

Last but not least, I was required by my status as a committee member of a couple of important curriculum and planning committees to contribute to a major curriculum renewal effort now underway at Unity College. Like most colleges that teach environmental stuff, we desperately need to update ourselves. The pace of change out there in the world, particularly in climate change and biodiversity, has gotten away from a lot of college professors and degree programs.

One of the great joys of my life right now as a 40-something academic at Unity College is to have all the very up-to-date new colleagues I have in the 30-something age class around. I enjoyed the mental challenge of graduate school, especially the interaction with other students and mentors. I'm still in touch and still exchange news and thoughts regularly with many of the academics I worked with in graduate school, but that by itself isn't enough to keep you current. Most of our young new professors are just a few years out of graduate school and very up-to-date and fresh. We now have a quite wonderful group at UC, and it promises to be a good few years ahead for us all, especially if we can change the curriculum where it is outdated and dry to take advantage of their energy and expertise.

So, all in all, a good semester and academic year, and one doing pretty much exactly what I should have been doing considering the external events. It's nice to be able to make a contribution, however small. maybe we'll avoid "lareg scale discontinuities" after all. I remain optimistic.

But boy, am I tired and punchy! And last week, I was particularly bad-tempered. I need about a week's sleep, some good food, and a bit more time to exercise.

I also have a fairly large backlog of farm work to catch up on. That starts the week after next, with the official start of summer scheduling. My contract gives me the summer to do my own thing, and although I keep up with my service and research, as well as prepare for classes and help out with sustainability stuff at college, most of what I do in summer is farm this small farm here.

I generally enjoy a good days firewood-cutting, or sheep-shearing, or potato-planting, much more than I do sitting in committee meetings or in front of the computer. My college work seems to age me, while my farm work rejuvenates me. It's nice to get good food and healthy exercise while saving climate emissions and rejuvenating a small plot of land.