#rmcleman

Thermal mapping with the department drone

^ Above: A tour of the Centre for Cold Regions and Water Science

^ Above:  Graduate student research talks

^ Above:  Thermal mapping with the department drone

^ Above:  Smartphone-based citizen science data collection

^ Above:  An inspiring talk by Aboriginal Scholar-in-Residence Darren Thomas

Our faculty hosted international students from Association of Commonweatlth Universities. They came from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Europe.

The academic goal was to expose the students (all of whom are at the graduate level) to ways of collecting and interpreting environmental data.

The above is a near infra red image, showing land and water.

The above is a near infra red image. Note the crowd of geographers on right side.

The above is a RGB image of land, water.

Photo credit: 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.