Laura Rademacher
I am not a teacher who stands in front of the classroom and lectures. I would rather encourage students to think like scientists and provide opportunities to develop critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. The best way to accomplish these goals is through curricula that engage students in the scientific method. In my courses, students are encouraged to ask questions about earth. Through their course-related exercises, my students design experiments, gather observations, collect data, and test hypotheses to try to answer the questions they pose. Examples of these activities include greenhouse gas inventories, acid mine drainage studies, coastal erosion surveys, and collaborative projects with other universities and professionals in related fields.
Many of my course-related activities occur in the field where students are not bound by limitations of classroom exercises. Students are truly free to develop their own creative approaches to the problems they're challenged with. I routinely take non-major students to exciting locations to highlight interesting geologic relationships. The field exercises I arrange for majors provide opportunities to work in unique locations with real world data and answer relevant questions. All together, these skills and experiences provide the foundation my students will need to succeed in Earth and Environmental Science careers.
(http://www1.pacific.edu/~lrademac/)
Laura Rademacher
Associate Professor of Earth & Environmental Science
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