From mogk at montana.edu Tue Jan 13 07:47:46 2004 From: mogk at montana.edu (David Mogk) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 08:47:46 -0700 Subject: [Biowksp] Teaching Biocomplexity in the Geosciences Theme Session at GSA? Message-ID: <40041322.1010006@montana.edu> Hi Biocomplexity Workshoppers, Greetings from Montana! It's been quite a while since this listserv has been active, and at the start of a new year and a new semester now seems to be an appropriate time. Here are a couple of quick items-- 1) I think we should think about convening a theme session on Teaching Biocomplexity in the Geosciences at the 2004 Fall GSA meeting. From GSA: the deadline for proposing a technical session for the 2004 GSA Annual Meeting in Denver is January 15, 2004, and that you must submit your technical session proposal online at We should also send the proposal to NAGT for their co-sponsorship (I can help do this). Could I ask 2-3 of our workshop friends to volunteer to organize this session? The process is really very simple--send the brief session proposal in to GSA on-line, prior to the abstract deadline do a little promotional work to encourage submissions, and during the summer it only takes about a day to organize the abstracts and submit the session program. Chairing the session at the meeting really takes very little effort, and this is a great way to bolster your P/T portfolio as having organized a national session! I would encourage all of the workshoppers to ultimately submit an abstract. And let's plan a reunion to see what everyone has been doing! Please let the listserv know if you can help organize this session. We don't want this to slip through the cracks. I can help coordinate the volunteer conveners. 2) We have a new syllabus posting tool available for sharing course design. This will particularly help BC folks who are exploring new and diverse ways to teach this subject. I'll send a note out in a week or so and let you know when the tool is "live" on the workshop webpage--it should be really interesting to see how courses have been designed or re-tooled. 3) I'm also going to send out a brief "longitudinal" survey to find out what impacts the workshop might have had. We nee d to do this to report to NSF about impacts of the project. This will be sent out in the next couple of days, so please think about any new instructional activities, collaborations, presentations, papers, etc. you've done that reflect on workshop activities, and we will share these experiences via the survey on the listserv. 4) Let's try to jump start this listserv with a new round of discussions. Some of the other workshop listservs have been quite productive--with queries about how to cover certain types of content, suggestions about alternate modes of discussion, requests for references (papers and URLs) on a given topic, etc. We've got a built in support group started on this listserv, so please consider posting advice, requests for help, etc. I hope you're all looking forward to a great new year. Write home once in awhile and let us know what you're up to... More soon, And best to all, Dave Mogk