From Field to Phone: A Karst Camp Chronicle

During the summer of 2020, many geology field camps were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the Karst Geomorphology field course I was scheduled to co-teach through Western Kentucky University. When the National Association of Geoscience Teachers (NAGT) in collaboration with the International Association for Geoscience Diversity (IAGD) began the project of supporting working groups to create online field experience teaching material, I saw an opportunity. From my field camp syllabus, I created two activities that are now freely available as peer-reviewed Exemplary Teaching Activities on the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) Online Field Experiences repository: Karst Hydrogeology: A virtual field introduction using © Google Earth and GIS and Karst Hydrogeology and Geomorphology: A virtual field experience using © Google Earth, GIS, and TAK [Topographic Analysis Kit]. Each product includes a student handout, an instructor workflow reference, a grading, and NAGT-established learning objectives. The introductory activity is the more basic of the two, is expected to take about one 8-hour day to teach, and walks students through all the steps, as well as providing global examples of karst landscapes to virtually explore. The other activity, Karst Hydrogeology and Geomorphology, assumes student familiarity with © Google Earth, GIS, and karst drainage systems, and is expected to take about twice as long as the introductory activity to teach. To make these learning opportunities financially accessible, all software required for the activities is open-source and alternative workflows for the introductory module are provided so that the entire exercise can be completed using a smartphone. In addition to providing online capstone activities in the time of a pandemic, these activities provide alternative learning experiences to traditional field camps that are inclusive for all geoscience students. In my home department of the University of Cincinnati, I had been contacted by students needing to find capstone experiences when their field camps were cancelled. Responding to this need and providing a virtual alternative for years to come, I reviewed all SERC activities that had been generated during the NAGT/IAGD joint effort. I selected a subset of those to assemble into three learning tracks, each one providing learning hours equivalent to a traditional field camp, that have been added to the course offerings at the University of Cincinnati Department of Geology.

First person – Talia Nasr

ABSTRACTFirst Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Disease Models & Mechanisms, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Talia Nasr is first author on ‘Disruption of a Hedgehog-Foxf1-Rspo2 signaling axis leads to tracheomalacia and a loss of Sox9+ tracheal chondrocytes’, published in DMM. Talia is a MD/PhD student at the University of Cincinnati, USA, currently in the final two MD years, with the PhD work completed in the lab of Aaron Zorn, investigating the pathogenesis of congenital tracheoesophageal defects.

Analysis of the Role of Chinese and American Supervisors of Internship Placement-Taking the University of Cincinnati's School-Enterprise Cooperation Model as an Example

The University of Cincinnati is the birthplace of the global paid internship program and has the most professional paid internship instructors in the United States. The University of Cincinnati has the most professional paid internship instructors in the United States. However, China's higher education institutions started their internship programs late, and instructors lack special training, which prevents them from playing their role fully. By analyzing the type of full-time mentor teachers, job content and legal functions of the University of Cincinnati, we will provide reference for the working model of new internship mentor teachers in China.

Repatriation, Incorporation, and Destruction: the destination of the Caster Collection at the Museu Nacional/UFRJ, Brazil

In the mid-twentieth century, geologist Kenneth E. Caster collected fossils of South American Paleozoic and Mesozoic invertebrates, further contributing to important research for Brazilian geology. The collected paleontological collection was later taken to study at the University of Cincinnati (USA), where it remained for more than six decades. In 2016, in an unprecedented agreement between the Universidade de Cincinnati and the Museu Nacional/UFRJ, the Caster collection was repatriated, incorporating it into the collection of paleoinvertebrates of the Museu Nacional/UFRJ. The report clarifying the trajectory of the collection's repatriation and its tragic, but partial, destruction in the institution's fire in 2018 and its current destination is the objective of this paper.