Initial Publication Date: October 17, 2008

Julie Snow

Geography, Geology, and the Environment
Slippery Rock University
1 Morrow Way
Slippery Rock, PA 16057
724.738.2503
mailto:julie.snow@sru.edu

Julie Snow

INTRODUCTION: I am an associate professor at Slippery Rock University in the Department of Geography, Geology, and the Environment. I am entering my fifth year at SRU and have been responsible for teaching the introduction to meteorology and oceanography courses. I also teach upper division air quality, air pollution meteorology, and quantitative methods courses. I will be teaching a new course called Earth's Changing Climate this spring that is open to general education students but taught at the 300 level.

My educational background is quite interdisciplinary. I have a Ph.D. in chemical oceanography but almost all of my research has been related to regional and long-range transport of air pollution.

I enjoy teaching intro to meteorology but teach 2 sections of 40 students every semester plus an on-line version of the course to 40 students each summer. I am interested in diversifying my teaching program because I'm getting bored with the course. Hopefully I'll get some good ideas from this workshop. I am also hoping to gain some insight into teaching climate change as my course starts in the spring.

ACTIVITY: I'd like to design an activity that shows the influence on hurricanes and coastal impact as sea level rises. For my oceanography classes I use the US coast guard maps of sea shore habitats to investigate the impacts of oil spills. I'm wondering if I can do a similar exercise with hurricanes and climate for my climatology class. We'll see!