Faculty Profile: Dr. Robert McLeman
Hi, I’m Robert McLeman. I’m entering my fourth year as a professor at Laurier, where I teach in the Environmental Studies program. This fall I will be teaching one of my favourite courses, ES298 Environmental Thought, where we read samples from classics in environmental literature, like “Walden” by Henry David Thoreau and “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson. This is a seminar style course, and we do some fun stuff. For example, last year when we were studying why many people like to garden, we did so while gardening. We planted tomato seeds during class, and raised them on windowsills in the department, and had a Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1601744863389511/) so we could monitor their growth. I’ve got some of them planted in my back yard right now. I’ll write more about ES298 in another posting. In the Winter 2016 semester I’ll be teaching two courses: ES102 Environmental Problems and a first-year seminar course AF101N Environmental Refugees and Climate Change. I’ll write more about them later, too.
I do research on two subjects (1) how environmental changes affect human migration patterns, and (2) how we can get the general public actively involved in environmental research (something known as “citizen science”). Last year I published a book on the first subject, called “Climate and Human Migration”, and you can see a description of it here (http://www.cambridge.org/mcleman). On the citizen science side, I help run two projects: NatureWatch, (www.naturewatch.ca) which asks people to use their smartphones to submit observations of frogs, flowers, earthworms, & frozen lakes, and Rinkwatch (www.rinkwatch.org) where Dr. Colin Robertson (http://legacy.wlu.ca/homepage.php?grp_id=12616) and I collect information about backyard skating rinks to track climate change. You can learn more about my research at my blog (http://thisgeographicallife.blogspot.ca/) or you can follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/rmcleman). Hope to see in one of my classes!
