Author Archives: Jonathan Nyquist

Many years ago, when I worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, I remember complaining to a senior colleague that some of the massive project reports we received from consulting firms were little more than a brief introduction and a boiler-plate … Continue reading →

Looking Back My final year as Director of General Education (GenEd) has been a busy one and I have fallen behind on my blog posts. After five years as director, I feel a sense of satisfaction — that I’ve made … Continue reading →

Many events in Philadelphia are centered around the one book, one Philadelphia program. To encourage students to attend these events we need to get them to read the book, which in 2022 is Quiara Alegría Hudes’ memoir, My Broken Language. … Continue reading →

Like so many others, I have been caught up in the daily word puzzle Wordle. a craze covered in the New Yorker, and one that earned its creator a tidy sum when the New York Times purchased the rights.  Inspired … Continue reading →

It is a common student lament: “A friend of mine is taking the same class from a different teacher and she has far fewer readings and papers.”  We’ve all heard it. Maybe we made similar complaints when we were college … Continue reading →

Funding Professional Societies I didn’t attend the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Society (AGU) this year, but my graduate student, Gina Pope, went and had a fabulous time in New Orleans despite continuing worries over the pandemic. But something … Continue reading →

In some ways, the virtual conferences that arose from necessity out of the pandemic are a boon for science.  No travel increases foreign participation and, arguably, student participation as well. A case in point is the upcoming symposium Application of … Continue reading →

It’s 2021; the weather is warming; people are getting vaccinated — time to start fieldwork again! This past week I went into the field with my graduate students Bojan Milinic and Gina Pope to install Terros-12 soil sensors at a … Continue reading →

  Using the cute little graphic above, Amazon web services define a data lake as: “… a centralized repository that allows you to store all your structured and unstructured data at any scale. You can store your data as-is, without … Continue reading →

The debate has raged for decades over the best use of student course feedback, or indeed, whether it should be used at all. Detractors cite studies that show racial and gender bias. Proponents argue that the student voice should be … Continue reading →