Experiential Education
I believe in experiential
education and fostering an appreciation for the natural world
in and outside of the classroom. I help organize and lead
wilderness trips for disadvantaged children in Sacramento through
Inner City Outings.
I used to guide rock climbing, snow camping, and backpacking trips
for college students and the general public through Davis
Outdoor Adventures
and Shasta Mountain Guides. I was introduced
to outdoor leadership and education through Princeton’s orientation
program, Outdoor Action,
where I lead trips and trained leaders in both technical skills
and group dynamics (see my
Outdoor Guide C.V.).
See my Teaching page for more
on my teaching inside the classroom.
Nonprofit Leadership
I believe in local community engagement and outreach. Or maybe I just like meetings too much. From 2008-2012 I volunteered on the board of directors of the nonprofit Solar Community Housing Association (SCHA), which is dedicated to sustainable cooperative living. During this time I helped the all-volunteer nonprofit bid for and execute the renovation of two historic Davis homes into a LEED certified cooperative providing affordable housing. The effort involved over 200 volunteers and student interns and over $500,000 investment over two years. In the following year we took over management of the on campus Domes cooperative through an agreement with UC Davis, performing the estimated $1 million in renovations through a community build involving nearly 500 volunteers over 4 days and a $30,000 fund raising campaign. I have also served as treasurer, webmaster, and a community mediator, and have attended and run workshops on conflict resolution, consensus decision making and meeting facilitation.
Open Science
I believe more open science makes large-scale, collaborative efforts possible, increases the chances that results are reproducible and improves the access of educators, policy-makers and taxpayers to the products of publicly funded research. I am a founding member of the Davis Open Science group, which promotes awareness, tools, and community around open science issues. I strive to make my research process transparent and reproducible through the practice of Open Notebook Science I am particularly interested in the role of technology in hampering or facilitating these goals. In this spirit, I am a founding member of the rOpenSci Project, a software developer collective with the goals of providing tools and building community to promote open science by providing programmatic access to scientific databases.