Curriculum Vitae
(Originally posted: 4/14/2013)
I recently visited the Cincinnati Museum Center again, this time for their exhibit “Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Ancient Times.” The exhibit had run at the museum since November, and unfortunately today (April 14, 2013) is the final day. Even so, I think a quick review is called for. Click through for my thoughts. Continue reading “Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Ancient Times”
(Originally posted: 3/17/2013)
Last week, I was teaching kinship systems in my cultural anthropology class, and as usual students were as interested in learning how our own kinship system works as they were in learning the systems used by other cultures. Everyone is pretty clear on grandparents and great-grandparents, but the cousins are confusing. It seems that, in the last few generations, Westerners have become increasingly haphazard in teaching their children how cousins work. Everyone knows that there are second cousins who are closer to you than third cousins, and everyone knows that there’s something about “once removed” and so on, but very few people seem to really understand how to calculate these things anymore. So, as a public service, I thought I’d explain it all. Click through for the full story. Continue reading “Counting Cousins”
(Originally posted: 12/22/2012)
It’s been a while since I’ve had the opportunity to post anything here, and that’s because I was wrapped up in finishing the fall semester. As always, I taught a couple sections of First Year Seminar this semester. It’s a course designed to introduce new college students to the kinds of reading, thinking, and writing expected of them in college. My experience in this course over the last several years is that students are woefully unprepared, not for the reading/thinking/writing necessarily (though some students certainly need better high school preparation in those skills!), but for the practical strategies of life on a college campus. Click through to the full story for a few of the most important pieces of advice I have for new freshmen! Continue reading “Advice for first semester freshmen”
(Originally posted: 9/19/2012)
I gave the first exam of the semester to my classes this afternoon, and it got me thinking. Like most (I’d assume) adjunct professors, I teach lower-level, introductory courses. And like most lower-level courses, my exams are usually objective exams, a combination of multiple choice and true/false kinds of questions. As students hand in the exams, I stack them face-down. Then I grade the exams from the first exam to be handed in, to the last. Over the last several years, I’ve noticed a pattern. Every class can be divided into about six groups of students, based on the order that they complete the exam. Continue reading “Testing Patterns”
(Originally posted: 6/27/2012)
It appears that the public and professional outcry against National Geographic Channel’s show “Diggers” (which I reviewed a few months ago) has paid off. Fred Limp, President of the Society for American Archaeology, has posted a letter on the SAA website describing a new direction for the show. NatGeo has agreed to revise the show to remove most of the egregious for-profit looting! Read Limp’s full letter here (PDF).
Unfortunately, still no word on SpikeTV’s even more offensive “American Digger.”
(Originally posted: 6/5/2012)
It’s been a while since I visited a museum exhibit and wrote about it here. Last weekend, I was back in Cincinnati, and I visited the Cincinnati Museum Center again to see the exhibit “A Day in Pompeii.” Click through for my review. Continue reading “A Day in Pompeii”