Fall 2018 SALTISE Mini-Grant Report: Investigating How Students Learn by Rescuing Historical Weather Data

Drew Bush has more than a decade of experience teaching students about Earth, ocean and climate science and evaluating the impact of technology-based inquiry, citizen science, and service-based curricula. In the past he has developed and evaluated technology-based science curricula for high school (e.g., at the American Museum of Natural History, McGill University’s Be A Climate Modeler For A Week Summer Camp), Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel (e.g., at John Abbott and Dawson Colleges) and undergraduate (e.g., at McGill University, New York University, Cornell University/University of New Hampshire’s Shoals Marine Laboratory) students.

Find out more about his work here: http://tomlinson.lab.mcgill.ca/Drew/index.html.

Victoria Slonosky is a historical climate researcher with more than two decades of experience analyzing past climates from early instrumental records from the 17th century onwards in both Canada and Europe.  She runs the Atmospheric Circulation Reconstruction over the Earth (ACRE) Canada data rescue project (https://sites.google.com/site/historicalclimatedata/Home) and DRAW. Her recently released book, Climate in the Age of Empire, details the historical climatology of the Saint-Lawrence Valley and the work of early weather observers in colonial Canada.

Geoffrey Pearce has been teaching geography and environment courses at Dawson College for the last seven years and is presently the chair of the Geography Department. His present focus is on developing courses that engage students as researchers. He has created courses where students conduct oral histories about Montreal neighbourhoods and map their findings and led the teaching of the pilot three-week DRAW module in his Research Methods (300-300-DW Section 07) course in Winter 2018.