Welcome to a work in progress: a reflection of my interests and effort.

I’m an associate professor of journalism at a small New Hampshire university, an aspiring photographer, a (very) small farmer, and I believe in paying attention to little things.

“There was a big god damn hole and we just kept dumping. . . All white and green and purple. That was our job all day long. We used to make the rounds of every building that had any kind of effluent. . . All that leftover junk’s been thrown in there.  That’s no good for you.  It’s all bad. I was thinking, Christ, it’s got to be getting into the water, where is it going to go?

Teaching consumes most of my days. 
It’s a challenging experience that demands creativity.

Years in the college classroom have shown me that hands-on learning works best.  Each week my journalism students contribute to The Exchange, a weekly online newspaper that they produce.  You can find it here.

I’ve built it around a support system where students get feedback from each other, as well as upper class students who have more experience.  As students progress through my classes they’re exposed to ever greater challenges – and they respond well to them.

 

This summer I began putting together readings in OneNote journals, with one per class.  I wanted to experiment with alternatives to textbooks, which many students find expensive. 

I like the ease with which I can assemble material, pulling in links to up-to-the-minute articles. I think the next step in this project is to organize the readings so that they’re clustered in manageable groups that students can easily identify.

Related to teaching: I have answered a number of questions on the site, Quora.com,
dealing with everything from advice to college students to writing.