{"id":9129,"date":"2014-06-05T12:40:59","date_gmt":"2014-06-05T19:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=9129"},"modified":"2014-06-11T09:17:08","modified_gmt":"2014-06-11T16:17:08","slug":"bridging-gaps-with-camosun-biology-and-environmental-technology-instructor-annette-dehalt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2014\/06\/05\/bridging-gaps-with-camosun-biology-and-environmental-technology-instructor-annette-dehalt\/","title":{"rendered":"Bridging gaps with Camosun Biology and Environmental Technology instructor Annette Dehalt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Know Your Profs<\/i> is an ongoing series of articles helping you get to know the instructors at Camosun College a bit better. Every issue we ask a different instructor the same 10 questions. Got someone you want to see interviewed? Email editor@nexusnewspaper.com and we\u2019ll get on it.<\/p>\n

This time around we caught up with Biology and Environmental Technology instructor Annette Dehalt and talked about agonizing over grading, the importance of bringing an extra jacket, and the gap between knowledge and knowledge-based action.<\/p>\n

1: What do you teach and how long have you been a teacher at Camosun?<\/i><\/p>\n

After a varied career of teaching, eco-tourism, and environmental contract work, I came to Camosun in 2003. I\u2019m teaching in both the Biology department and the Environmental Technology program\u2014courses range from Introductory Biology to Marine Biology and Vertebrate Ecology and also include a number of field modules. I\u2019m a big proponent of field trips, since I believe nature can best be taught in nature.<\/p>\n

2: What do you personally get out of teaching?<\/i><\/p>\n

Between my various jobs in dealing with people\u2014think tour destination management\u2014and with biological science\u2014think research cruise or microscope work\u2014I\u2019ve always enjoyed those jobs best that offered both interaction with people and with biology. That\u2019s why I always gravitated back to science education. I love sparking that same enthusiasm and empathy I feel for living things in someone else. I find it very rewarding to have helped someone to a better understanding of nature. It makes my day if I learn of students paying it forward and making a contribution to animal or environmental protection, be it in their careers or personal endeavours.<\/p>\n

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Camoun’s Annette Dehalt and her rescue dog dash (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

3: What\u2019s one thing you wish your students knew about you?<\/i><\/p>\n

That I agonize about their marks. That I sometimes wish I could just teach, and not worry about assessing everybody\u2019s performance. I remember from being a student that grading seemed like such a fearsome power professors had. Now that I\u2019m on the other side of the fence, it\u2019s actually the toughest part of the job. I\u2019m a stickler for fairness, and try to ensure no one gets an unfair advantage or disadvantage. And it\u2019s never fun to assign a poor grade.<\/p>\n

4: What\u2019s one thing you wish they didn\u2019t know about you?<\/i><\/p>\n

That I usually bring a stash of extra jackets, rain gear, snacks, UV screen lotion, etc., to field trips. It drives me crazy when people come optimistically under-prepared despite instructions to the contrary\u2014kind of reminds me of myself in my younger years\u2014but I never quite have the heart to let them learn the really hard way\u2026<\/p>\n

5: What\u2019s the best thing that\u2019s ever happened to you as a teacher here?<\/i><\/p>\n

Developing a new non-majors course in Introductory Marine Biology. My background is in biological oceanography\u2014ecological relationships between marine circulation, krill, and humpback whales\u2014but until a couple of years ago, I never had the chance to teach a course in my specialty. Camosun supported my proposal to offer this new course, which to my knowledge still is the only first-year level Marine Biology course in the province. It\u2019s been a special joy to introduce students to life in the oceans\u2014and, yes, I even took them whale-watching!<\/p>\n

6: What\u2019s the worst thing that\u2019s ever happened to you as a teacher here?<\/i><\/p>\n

There was this embarrassing case of \u201cabsented-minded professorship\u201d: it was mid-week in a winter semester, and by 9:30 am I was in my Wednesday morning routine\u2014hair in towel, with a big mug of coffee at my computer at home, putting a couple of finishing touches on my 10:30 am lecture notes, when the phone rings. It\u2019s the head lab technologist: \u201cAre you okay? What should I tell the class? They\u2019re waiting to get in the lab.\u201d \u201cIt can\u2019t be my class,\u201d I respond confidently. \u201cI don\u2019t have lab on Wednesdays; I\u2019m getting ready for my 10:30 lecture.\u201d To my horror, I am informed that it is indeed only Tuesday and my lab has officially started 5 minutes ago. Luckily, I live close to work! While I still value, and evaluate, punctuality in my students, everybody gets one \u201cno penalty, no questions asked\u201d late assignment since that day\u2026<\/p>\n

7: What do you see in the future of postsecondary education?<\/i><\/p>\n

I would like to see more integration and less compartmentalization of subjects, a more multi-disciplinary, problem-solving approach. For example, having instructors and students group around a hot new research topic\u2014for example, animal sentience\u2014or a local issue: urban wildlife or habitat pollution. Then pool resources from various faculties, including Biology, Chemistry, Psychology, Philosophy, Political Science, First Nations Studies, Law, and Economics to address the topic in a more holistic fashion.<\/p>\n

8: What do you do to relax on the weekends?<\/i><\/p>\n

On weekends, when I\u2019m not catching up on chores, I take time to Skype with my family in Germany, go for a hike with friends and our dogs, go horseback riding, or simply putter around my large garden.<\/p>\n

9: What\u2019s your favourite meal?<\/i><\/p>\n

Can\u2019t say I have one favorite meal, but staples in my house are muesli and homemade bread, lots of fruits, nuts, veggies, beans, and lentils. And huge slabs of dark chocolate, just to keep it honest. It was difficult for me at first to exclude meat, which I\u2019m doing for humane and environmental reasons, but I\u2019ve probably become a better and more adventurous cook as a vegetarian!<\/p>\n

10: What\u2019s your biggest pet peeve?<\/i><\/p>\n

The gap between knowledge and knowledge-based action. In my opinion, it\u2019s usually not the lack of science or knowledge that prevents progress in society, and that can be very frustrating for an idealistic science educator\u2026 The data are in\u2014we know enough about what causes harm to the environment, certain species, and individual animals to change the status quo of so many practices. And yet change is slow, and knowledge without compassion may not get us there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Know Your Profs is an ongoing series of articles helping you get to know the instructors at Camosun College a bit better. Every issue we ask a different instructor the same 10 questions. Got someone you want to see interviewed? Email editor@nexusnewspaper.com and we\u2019ll get on it. This time around we caught up with Biology […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-june-11-2014"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9129"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9153,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9129\/revisions\/9153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}