WEBVTT 00:00:11.319 --> 00:00:16.879 lost in the fog of a cosmic storm floating on 00:00:16.879 --> 00:00:21.120 whimsical wavelengths is the norm dancing through 00:00:21.120 --> 00:00:27.379 the stars chasing spectrums of light riding the 00:00:27.379 --> 00:00:32.109 waves that are just out It's time for whimsical 00:00:32.109 --> 00:00:35.070 wavelengths again. And this time, a different 00:00:35.070 --> 00:00:37.729 type of paper. One that turns the lens on the 00:00:37.729 --> 00:00:41.189 degree process itself. Ah, just before we get 00:00:41.189 --> 00:00:43.890 going though, if you've got the time, the space, 00:00:43.990 --> 00:00:47.630 you're not driving, you know, drop a review on 00:00:47.630 --> 00:00:50.710 Apple or rating on Spotify or whatever app you're 00:00:50.710 --> 00:00:53.289 using. It really does help the show and gets 00:00:53.289 --> 00:00:56.549 it out to even more people to discover it. Okay, 00:00:56.590 --> 00:00:58.909 so... A discipline, a scientific discipline, 00:00:59.009 --> 00:01:01.390 that does not have a diverse group is missing 00:01:01.390 --> 00:01:05.269 out. Missing out on ideas, perspectives, and 00:01:05.269 --> 00:01:09.109 cognitive diversity. The unique ways different 00:01:09.109 --> 00:01:13.769 minds solve complex spatial puzzles. In some 00:01:13.769 --> 00:01:16.590 fields, part of the education happens away from 00:01:16.590 --> 00:01:19.670 the classroom. Sometimes in a literal field. 00:01:20.780 --> 00:01:25.200 There has always been a mantra that to do fieldwork, 00:01:25.280 --> 00:01:29.400 you need to be a certain way. Be able to hike 00:01:29.400 --> 00:01:33.459 up hills, handle being beside traffic -heavy 00:01:33.459 --> 00:01:37.060 roadways, to look at rock cuts. We've treated 00:01:37.060 --> 00:01:39.859 the outdoors as a character -building rite of 00:01:39.859 --> 00:01:43.859 passage rather than a classroom. Perhaps I should 00:01:43.859 --> 00:01:46.579 go on a rant of what fieldwork is. typically 00:01:46.579 --> 00:01:49.540 is an industry long time listeners have heard 00:01:49.540 --> 00:01:53.420 it before it's long days in rugged terrain often 00:01:53.420 --> 00:01:56.459 in the very remote locations dealing with helicopters 00:01:56.459 --> 00:02:00.359 bugs and animals but most importantly not all 00:02:00.359 --> 00:02:05.319 geoscience is that not all geoscience work or 00:02:05.319 --> 00:02:10.300 discovery happens under those conditions that 00:02:10.300 --> 00:02:13.560 is incredibly important to recognize because 00:02:13.560 --> 00:02:16.889 if the field is a barrier we're not just losing 00:02:16.889 --> 00:02:19.949 students we're losing the future of geosciences 00:02:19.949 --> 00:02:23.530 bringing in students with sensory cognitive and 00:02:23.530 --> 00:02:25.990 physical disabilities into academically rigorous 00:02:25.990 --> 00:02:29.349 ways needs to be part of moving the education 00:02:29.349 --> 00:02:32.650 forward and if we do so it leads to better departments 00:02:32.650 --> 00:02:36.110 and a healthier more innovative discipline today 00:02:36.110 --> 00:02:38.969 we will explore a paper centered around a workshop 00:02:38.969 --> 00:02:43.030 held right here in Vancouver, where multi -sensory 00:02:43.030 --> 00:02:46.530 engagement and flexible delivery proved that 00:02:46.530 --> 00:02:49.509 accessibility doesn't mean compromising academic 00:02:49.509 --> 00:02:54.949 merit. In fact, it often enhances it for everyone. 00:02:55.669 --> 00:02:59.990 I absolutely have the appetite to dig into this 00:02:59.990 --> 00:03:04.629 topic. I refuse to take education for granted. 00:03:05.030 --> 00:03:08.169 It belongs to all of us, although perhaps it 00:03:08.169 --> 00:03:11.439 needs a little... metamorphism to reach its final 00:03:11.439 --> 00:03:14.439 form. To explore this topic, I have a guest coming 00:03:14.439 --> 00:03:16.960 in to discuss how physical changes to field work, 00:03:17.060 --> 00:03:19.659 careful planning and the changing of perceptions 00:03:19.659 --> 00:03:23.159 are all integral to this endeavor. Today's guest 00:03:23.159 --> 00:03:25.800 is an expert in his field, pun intended, and 00:03:25.800 --> 00:03:29.099 a master at field teaching. Please welcome Brett 00:03:29.099 --> 00:03:32.659 Gilley, a professor of teaching at University 00:03:32.659 --> 00:03:38.099 of British Columbia. Hello. Okay, I figured I'd 00:03:38.099 --> 00:03:40.620 start by embarrassing you, at least buttering 00:03:40.620 --> 00:03:47.340 you up. You sport an impressive 96 % of would 00:03:47.340 --> 00:03:51.300 take again at ratemyprofessor .com with comments 00:03:51.300 --> 00:03:54.800 like great teacher and comedian. So I'm definitely 00:03:54.800 --> 00:03:57.939 looking forward to your ending punchline. But 00:03:57.939 --> 00:04:01.860 to start, I thought perhaps the best place is 00:04:01.860 --> 00:04:06.139 what is teaching to you or your take on pedagogy? 00:04:06.730 --> 00:04:10.490 I mean, teaching is what I love. And, you know, 00:04:10.509 --> 00:04:14.870 Rate My Prof is always amusing. You get the people 00:04:14.870 --> 00:04:17.110 who love you and the people who hate you. And 00:04:17.110 --> 00:04:18.829 at least from my perspective, I always think 00:04:18.829 --> 00:04:22.370 the people who love me can't spell. It says something 00:04:22.370 --> 00:04:27.100 about their abilities. I got to interject you 00:04:27.100 --> 00:04:30.120 right there because I can't spell. I have a PhD 00:04:30.120 --> 00:04:33.180 and I literally took geophysics because I couldn't 00:04:33.180 --> 00:04:35.139 spell. I did not want to take anything to do 00:04:35.139 --> 00:04:37.199 with biology because I figured that's 50 % of 00:04:37.199 --> 00:04:41.980 my mark gone like that. So I have a big heart 00:04:41.980 --> 00:04:45.360 for all of those who can't spell. I say it lovingly 00:04:45.360 --> 00:04:49.800 because I am one of them. But yeah, it's just 00:04:49.800 --> 00:04:52.139 sort of a, it's an interesting, I mean, we spend 00:04:52.139 --> 00:04:55.819 a lot of time talking about teaching. And teaching 00:04:55.819 --> 00:04:57.579 evaluations and those sorts of things that people 00:04:57.579 --> 00:05:00.160 talk about teaching as if they're an objective 00:05:00.160 --> 00:05:04.600 measure. But teaching evaluations are, you know, 00:05:04.600 --> 00:05:08.120 done by 18 to 22 year olds who don't necessarily 00:05:08.120 --> 00:05:10.600 have a huge amount of perspective or life experience. 00:05:10.699 --> 00:05:13.100 And so it's one of those things that I rail against 00:05:13.100 --> 00:05:15.259 sometimes. But yeah, teaching is something that 00:05:15.259 --> 00:05:18.079 I love. It's a huge part of my job. And, you 00:05:18.079 --> 00:05:22.620 know, I think that earth science is something 00:05:22.620 --> 00:05:24.889 that everybody should do. And everybody should 00:05:24.889 --> 00:05:26.810 learn. And, you know, you'd hope that that's 00:05:26.810 --> 00:05:28.970 what most people feel like when they're a teacher, 00:05:29.050 --> 00:05:30.730 that they love teaching their subject. But I 00:05:30.730 --> 00:05:32.689 just feel like I'm really gifted that I get to 00:05:32.689 --> 00:05:36.550 share what I love and watch people experience 00:05:36.550 --> 00:05:39.610 it. And everybody can do it. I end up with a 00:05:39.610 --> 00:05:44.189 lot of students who are very, they have imposter 00:05:44.189 --> 00:05:47.139 syndrome and they often come to us as if. this 00:05:47.139 --> 00:05:49.339 is the science that they've been dreading. And, 00:05:49.379 --> 00:05:51.000 oh, I'm not good at science. And I'm like, well, 00:05:51.019 --> 00:05:53.660 that's not really, there's not like a gene for 00:05:53.660 --> 00:05:56.360 science, you know? And it's just the way they've 00:05:56.360 --> 00:05:58.319 been taught and the way they understand knowledge, 00:05:58.399 --> 00:06:00.740 they come in very apprehensive. And part of what 00:06:00.740 --> 00:06:02.519 I love is being able to show these people that, 00:06:02.540 --> 00:06:05.160 oh, no, you live on the earth. You love the earth. 00:06:05.579 --> 00:06:08.279 The earth is really cool. And you can do this. 00:06:08.459 --> 00:06:13.379 It's a good job. See, right there, obviously, 00:06:13.420 --> 00:06:16.829 you're railing and being like, being, What's 00:06:16.829 --> 00:06:20.069 the word? Humble about your 96%. But, I mean, 00:06:20.069 --> 00:06:21.870 right there it kind of says the same. You're 00:06:21.870 --> 00:06:26.329 not funny yet, though. Oh, I'm sorry. It's okay. 00:06:26.589 --> 00:06:31.750 Gravity sucks. Oh, that hurts. That hurts. That 00:06:31.750 --> 00:06:35.389 hurts so much. That's my favorite joke in lecture 00:06:35.389 --> 00:06:38.810 because it's so bad. Well, you've got to have 00:06:38.810 --> 00:06:40.910 at least a picture of a kid standing there with 00:06:40.910 --> 00:06:44.350 an ice cream on the concrete, right? Well... 00:06:44.639 --> 00:06:46.959 I actually prefer just leaving it there, because 00:06:46.959 --> 00:06:49.079 what happens is it's such a bad joke that it's 00:06:49.079 --> 00:06:51.100 not actually funny, and usually three or four 00:06:51.100 --> 00:06:52.800 weeks later a student will come up and say, I 00:06:52.800 --> 00:06:55.939 didn't get your gravity joke. And I get to explain, 00:06:56.259 --> 00:06:59.040 oh, gravity sucks, like, down. And they're like, 00:06:59.259 --> 00:07:03.000 oh. And you know they've been lying awake at 00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:05.500 night wondering why they didn't get the joke. 00:07:05.800 --> 00:07:09.899 It's just because it's so stupid. Yeah, those 00:07:09.899 --> 00:07:12.000 are some of my favorite jokes. Yeah, me too. 00:07:12.180 --> 00:07:14.300 And we've had some really good ones on the podcast, 00:07:14.379 --> 00:07:16.540 so I'm really looking forward to yours. I should 00:07:16.540 --> 00:07:19.500 have saved it. You probably should have. The 00:07:19.500 --> 00:07:22.019 paper at the center of this episode starts with 00:07:22.019 --> 00:07:26.560 a problem, and I think let's start there. This 00:07:26.560 --> 00:07:29.120 isn't the first discussion here on the podcast, 00:07:29.379 --> 00:07:30.899 Whimsical Wavelinks, touching on the subject 00:07:30.899 --> 00:07:34.759 of, like, how do we learn? How do we... point 00:07:34.759 --> 00:07:37.839 the camera or the lens or the telescope back 00:07:37.839 --> 00:07:41.660 at the scientist. Previously on this show, it 00:07:41.660 --> 00:07:44.420 was wrapped up in identity of astronomy and science 00:07:44.420 --> 00:07:46.699 more generally. Earth science is suffering from 00:07:46.699 --> 00:07:50.579 a recruitment problem writ large. What is the 00:07:50.579 --> 00:07:54.560 biggest problem with this in your eyes? It's 00:07:54.560 --> 00:07:57.740 an interesting problem. We say regularly that... 00:07:57.980 --> 00:07:59.759 we aren't going to be able to produce enough 00:07:59.759 --> 00:08:03.600 geologists to replace retirements. I've kind 00:08:03.600 --> 00:08:06.540 of been hearing that my whole life, and we seem 00:08:06.540 --> 00:08:08.500 to still have a field. But there's this idea 00:08:08.500 --> 00:08:11.800 that we need more geoscientists than we are producing. 00:08:12.139 --> 00:08:14.920 And part of that's just because, you know, in... 00:08:15.939 --> 00:08:19.019 Like 1905, someone in Chicago decided that instead 00:08:19.019 --> 00:08:20.779 of doing natural history, they were going to 00:08:20.779 --> 00:08:23.500 do biology and leave geology out. And then the 00:08:23.500 --> 00:08:25.639 whole world followed them. So we don't have a 00:08:25.639 --> 00:08:29.120 lot of earth science in high schools in that 00:08:29.120 --> 00:08:31.379 way. And the earth science we do have in high 00:08:31.379 --> 00:08:34.179 schools is sort of billed as, oh, you're no good 00:08:34.179 --> 00:08:38.019 at science. You should do this. It's easy. It's 00:08:38.019 --> 00:08:41.059 just rock collecting, which really troubles a 00:08:41.059 --> 00:08:43.759 lot of my colleagues. I actually, I kind of like 00:08:43.759 --> 00:08:46.470 it. It's nice, like I talked to my friends in 00:08:46.470 --> 00:08:49.389 math, for example, the first year of university 00:08:49.389 --> 00:08:53.850 is really year 13 for math. And you can't diagnose 00:08:53.850 --> 00:08:57.070 if someone missed something key in grade five 00:08:57.070 --> 00:09:00.090 and just could never do it after that and were, 00:09:00.269 --> 00:09:03.710 you know, decided that they couldn't do it. That's 00:09:03.710 --> 00:09:06.049 really hard to diagnose, whereas we can be fairly 00:09:06.049 --> 00:09:08.110 confident that most of our first year students 00:09:08.110 --> 00:09:10.350 are learning about a lot of this stuff the first 00:09:10.350 --> 00:09:12.669 time. And I think in some ways that's quite freeing. 00:09:13.549 --> 00:09:15.669 And it means that I can really spend my time 00:09:15.669 --> 00:09:18.190 teaching, trying to convince people that, oh, 00:09:18.190 --> 00:09:20.309 you're just majoring in the wrong thing and this 00:09:20.309 --> 00:09:23.549 is awesome. And so I kind of like that. But I 00:09:23.549 --> 00:09:26.389 do recognize it would be easier to fill those 00:09:26.389 --> 00:09:29.950 positions if we had more people coming from high 00:09:29.950 --> 00:09:32.870 school. But I'm not sure that it's that bad, 00:09:33.049 --> 00:09:37.629 honestly. I guess it depends also what the industry 00:09:37.629 --> 00:09:40.789 is doing at a particular time. Because I know 00:09:40.789 --> 00:09:44.360 in the case of... The current moment. Everyone, 00:09:45.179 --> 00:09:49.879 everyone is hiring. If you have a degree, you 00:09:49.879 --> 00:09:54.200 obviously don't sound like your brain is on stun. 00:09:54.460 --> 00:09:57.500 You will get hired. If you've taken a single 00:09:57.500 --> 00:09:59.919 geology course and you don't drool at the interview, 00:10:00.039 --> 00:10:02.899 you are welcome for the summer work. I've talked 00:10:02.899 --> 00:10:05.299 to some companies that are hiring hundreds of 00:10:05.299 --> 00:10:07.559 students this summer. And obviously it's very 00:10:07.559 --> 00:10:10.759 cyclical. In the year I graduated, in the late 00:10:10.759 --> 00:10:14.940 90s, Nothing. Oil was down. Mining was down. 00:10:15.059 --> 00:10:17.139 Environmental science was just picking up. There 00:10:17.139 --> 00:10:19.360 was really nothing. Several of my friends became 00:10:19.360 --> 00:10:22.279 baristas and had to come back to geology five 00:10:22.279 --> 00:10:25.700 or even ten years later. So this is a good time 00:10:25.700 --> 00:10:30.960 for our students. And it helps us. We are in 00:10:30.960 --> 00:10:32.600 a bit of a competition when it comes to choosing 00:10:32.600 --> 00:10:34.299 majors at the University of British Columbia. 00:10:34.519 --> 00:10:37.120 They choose their specialization at the end of 00:10:37.120 --> 00:10:41.620 first year. And so we... We spend a lot of time 00:10:41.620 --> 00:10:44.200 around now talking to students who are frantically 00:10:44.200 --> 00:10:47.879 trying to make the right choice. And a crazy 00:10:47.879 --> 00:10:50.259 number wants to go into computer science. Well, 00:10:50.299 --> 00:10:52.899 it's nice for us to be able to say, A, we have 00:10:52.899 --> 00:10:55.519 exactly the same salary structure with a very 00:10:55.519 --> 00:10:58.980 high starting salary and potential for stratospheric 00:10:58.980 --> 00:11:03.899 salaries. And also, you're probably likely to 00:11:03.899 --> 00:11:08.139 get a job if you do geology. Yeah. What about... 00:11:09.100 --> 00:11:12.639 the whole thing that there is a significant push 00:11:12.639 --> 00:11:16.460 and it's a lot to do with how we fund education 00:11:16.460 --> 00:11:19.179 and other things at the post -secondary level 00:11:19.179 --> 00:11:21.580 so universities and colleges that we're having 00:11:21.580 --> 00:11:25.740 closures and a reduction in the number of faculty 00:11:25.740 --> 00:11:31.679 and yet you still have this push for making sure 00:11:31.679 --> 00:11:34.179 we have people to be able to fill these positions. 00:11:34.519 --> 00:11:37.139 Yeah, it's fairly dark times in post -secondary 00:11:37.139 --> 00:11:39.200 right now. A lot of that's related to the ways 00:11:39.200 --> 00:11:44.179 that the international student caps arrived in 00:11:44.179 --> 00:11:45.940 the last couple of years. Sure, but it's not 00:11:45.940 --> 00:11:49.159 just Canada. It's also Australia. It's the U 00:11:49.159 --> 00:11:52.080 .S. It's basically all of the Western world. 00:11:52.299 --> 00:11:55.320 Yeah, and we fund the universities strangely. 00:11:56.200 --> 00:11:58.980 Like they are clearly a net benefit to society 00:11:58.980 --> 00:12:02.700 to have a well -educated populace, but it's not 00:12:02.700 --> 00:12:05.019 popular for anyone to give more money to the 00:12:05.019 --> 00:12:08.320 universities. And so in BC, for example, and 00:12:08.320 --> 00:12:10.679 much of Canada, the way we've been able to increase 00:12:10.679 --> 00:12:12.899 funding is to bring in more international students. 00:12:12.980 --> 00:12:15.519 And so in the last couple of years, when that 00:12:15.519 --> 00:12:18.399 gets howled, it's very difficult. Universities 00:12:18.399 --> 00:12:22.240 are like UBC is the 800 pound gorilla, right? 00:12:22.299 --> 00:12:25.309 Like, oh. Our enrollments went down. Well, we'll 00:12:25.309 --> 00:12:27.509 lower our entrance requirements slightly and 00:12:27.509 --> 00:12:29.570 steal all the students from all the other institutions. 00:12:29.710 --> 00:12:33.389 So the two -year schools and the newer, smaller 00:12:33.389 --> 00:12:35.690 universities are really struggling right now. 00:12:35.769 --> 00:12:37.470 And some of them, especially the ones that were 00:12:37.470 --> 00:12:39.929 sort of overextended on international students, 00:12:40.129 --> 00:12:42.870 are, you know, there's layoffs in permanent faculty, 00:12:43.029 --> 00:12:46.029 which is not yet resolved into the universities. 00:12:47.330 --> 00:12:51.240 On that dark moment. Let's start moving towards 00:12:51.240 --> 00:12:53.759 something that actually is a bit more touchy 00:12:53.759 --> 00:12:56.559 feely or at least feels good in the sense that 00:12:56.559 --> 00:12:59.940 diversity and inclusion in any discipline is 00:12:59.940 --> 00:13:04.200 absolutely important. And I can't plant the flag 00:13:04.200 --> 00:13:07.620 any harder than those words, perhaps, unless 00:13:07.620 --> 00:13:12.000 I literally start. drumming the earth I have 00:13:12.000 --> 00:13:14.480 attempted to make the case for this but what 00:13:14.480 --> 00:13:17.279 does it mean to you why is it important or rephrase 00:13:17.279 --> 00:13:21.419 it more classically for any you know discipline 00:13:21.419 --> 00:13:25.019 why should we care I mean when you talk about 00:13:25.600 --> 00:13:28.139 the success of groups. What you want, a successful 00:13:28.139 --> 00:13:30.200 group has diversity in it. People coming from 00:13:30.200 --> 00:13:32.360 different ideas, coming from different places. 00:13:32.659 --> 00:13:34.179 You're going to have a group that comes with 00:13:34.179 --> 00:13:35.980 more stuff. If everybody's the same, they're 00:13:35.980 --> 00:13:37.259 all going to come up with the same solutions. 00:13:37.340 --> 00:13:40.279 It's not going to be as good. And so in geoscience, 00:13:40.320 --> 00:13:42.519 for example, we've struggled a lot with a lack 00:13:42.519 --> 00:13:45.480 of diversity. When you have, when chemistry makes 00:13:45.480 --> 00:13:47.440 you look good, for example, for accessibility, 00:13:47.879 --> 00:13:51.039 that's not a great sign. Like all they have to 00:13:51.039 --> 00:13:54.110 do is... slap in a low desk and they call it 00:13:54.110 --> 00:13:56.129 a day. But for us, having somebody with a mobility 00:13:56.129 --> 00:13:59.230 disability out in the field can be very challenging, 00:13:59.389 --> 00:14:01.730 right? And the knee -jerk reaction of many professors 00:14:01.730 --> 00:14:03.669 is to say, oh, I'm sorry, you just can't come. 00:14:04.590 --> 00:14:07.629 Whereas it's a lot easier in a lot of other institutions. 00:14:07.669 --> 00:14:09.830 But because field work is a central focus of 00:14:09.830 --> 00:14:14.149 our discipline, we're necessarily obsessed with 00:14:14.149 --> 00:14:17.470 about that. And that resolves itself in strange 00:14:17.470 --> 00:14:21.419 ways. All right, and I'll come back to maybe 00:14:21.419 --> 00:14:24.659 some examples or some comparisons to other fields 00:14:24.659 --> 00:14:28.320 in a moment. But now to the paper, or the papers, 00:14:28.600 --> 00:14:32.120 if you will. Making geoscience fieldwork inclusive 00:14:32.120 --> 00:14:35.000 and accessible for students with disabilities 00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:38.759 is the title of at least one of them. And the 00:14:38.759 --> 00:14:41.779 two of them together look at the process or the 00:14:41.779 --> 00:14:44.799 event from two different... viewpoints. So setting 00:14:44.799 --> 00:14:48.259 it up briefly in two to three sentences, what 00:14:48.259 --> 00:14:52.440 was the event? So we did an accessible field 00:14:52.440 --> 00:14:55.559 trip as part of a geologic conference in Vancouver 00:14:55.559 --> 00:15:00.159 several years ago. And the whole point was to 00:15:00.159 --> 00:15:03.759 bring students with disabilities together with 00:15:03.759 --> 00:15:06.919 professors and to sort of show best practices 00:15:06.919 --> 00:15:10.210 for having an accessible trip. That was the goal. 00:15:10.429 --> 00:15:12.549 Of course, everything immediately goes off the 00:15:12.549 --> 00:15:15.110 rails. What we discovered is we had some students 00:15:15.110 --> 00:15:17.669 with disabilities, some without, but we ended 00:15:17.669 --> 00:15:19.230 up with a lot of professors with disabilities 00:15:19.230 --> 00:15:22.509 who wanted to join the trip as well. And so already 00:15:22.509 --> 00:15:26.309 our perspective was too narrow. And we ended 00:15:26.309 --> 00:15:28.690 up with many people with many different disabilities 00:15:28.690 --> 00:15:32.129 on what you would normally call a first year 00:15:32.129 --> 00:15:37.759 field trip up to Whistler and back. Just because 00:15:37.759 --> 00:15:40.860 I know the corridor relatively well, because 00:15:40.860 --> 00:15:44.220 I live in, obviously, I think I can easily walk 00:15:44.220 --> 00:15:47.220 to your house, actually. Probably, if you're 00:15:47.220 --> 00:15:50.460 interested, you still can. So was this like to 00:15:50.460 --> 00:15:53.179 see, just to keep people in the mind, that geology, 00:15:53.440 --> 00:15:55.320 you go out and see the rocks. Are we talking 00:15:55.320 --> 00:16:00.240 about some of the basaltic columns? Like what 00:16:00.240 --> 00:16:02.779 other things are you seeing along this particular? 00:16:03.580 --> 00:16:09.100 So we do it as an integrated trip that can include 00:16:09.100 --> 00:16:11.639 most of the first year courses in our Earth, 00:16:11.720 --> 00:16:13.519 Ocean and Atmospheric Science Department. So 00:16:13.519 --> 00:16:15.500 we can bring in different things. You know, we 00:16:15.500 --> 00:16:19.389 start off. At Stanley Park on the beach, looking 00:16:19.389 --> 00:16:21.950 at beach processes and combining that with winds 00:16:21.950 --> 00:16:25.370 and storms. And, you know, we go up and we look 00:16:25.370 --> 00:16:27.830 up the lower mainland at Cypress Mountain. We 00:16:27.830 --> 00:16:29.970 go look at landslides. We look at glacial stuff. 00:16:30.110 --> 00:16:31.789 You know, we look at a whole variety of things. 00:16:32.009 --> 00:16:34.590 And it's just because we're lucky enough that 00:16:34.590 --> 00:16:36.409 we can look at all those things in a very simple 00:16:36.409 --> 00:16:38.809 trip. I mean, I literally did this on Saturday. 00:16:40.240 --> 00:16:42.639 We went just past Squamish and back. We left 00:16:42.639 --> 00:16:46.799 at 9. We were home by 4 .30. We're really blessed 00:16:46.799 --> 00:16:50.259 with how much geology we can access so quickly. 00:16:50.960 --> 00:16:52.860 That's the reason why we call it beautiful British 00:16:52.860 --> 00:16:54.820 Columbia. Or did we switch it to supernatural? 00:16:55.559 --> 00:17:03.299 Probably both. Okay, so how does this make it, 00:17:03.360 --> 00:17:05.900 just in general, we'll get into more of the details 00:17:05.900 --> 00:17:09.380 eventually, but how is this more accessible? 00:17:10.849 --> 00:17:13.069 So, I mean, there's a certain point where I should 00:17:13.069 --> 00:17:15.309 take a step back and talk maybe about how I even 00:17:15.309 --> 00:17:19.349 got involved in this. I was at the Geologic Society 00:17:19.349 --> 00:17:24.289 of America conference and I met a guy and we'd 00:17:24.289 --> 00:17:25.750 been talking about stuff and he said, oh, I'm 00:17:25.750 --> 00:17:27.990 presenting. I said, I'll go watch your presentation. 00:17:28.009 --> 00:17:30.970 And he was presenting on his PhD work where he 00:17:30.970 --> 00:17:35.470 took eight quadriplegic and paraplegic students 00:17:35.470 --> 00:17:41.019 into Mammoth Cave. which was not accessible at 00:17:41.019 --> 00:17:44.920 that time, and had them doing mapping, and I 00:17:44.920 --> 00:17:48.039 was watching this. Wait, just for the listener, 00:17:48.220 --> 00:17:51.240 what is Mammoth Cave? Mammoth Cave is a gigantic 00:17:51.240 --> 00:17:53.940 cave complex in the southeast U .S. It's one 00:17:53.940 --> 00:17:57.680 of the biggest in the world. Caves formed by? 00:17:57.700 --> 00:18:01.920 Pardon? Caves formed by? Formed in carbonate 00:18:01.920 --> 00:18:06.190 rock and formed by the process of... water erosion 00:18:06.190 --> 00:18:09.849 carbonate rock is susceptible to acid rainwater 00:18:09.849 --> 00:18:12.869 naturally is slightly acidic and so therefore 00:18:12.869 --> 00:18:15.910 it's very easy for it to make huge cave complexes 00:18:15.910 --> 00:18:19.009 and when people think of caves carbonate caves 00:18:19.009 --> 00:18:20.750 are really what they're talking about we don't 00:18:20.750 --> 00:18:23.289 get that type of cave in our mountains here for 00:18:23.289 --> 00:18:25.750 example because the rock's not right so this 00:18:25.750 --> 00:18:28.950 is a huge cave complex he's presenting on this 00:18:28.950 --> 00:18:31.329 and i'm sitting in the audience thinking i did 00:18:31.329 --> 00:18:34.269 a field trip last week and I have two people 00:18:34.269 --> 00:18:36.930 in my class of 500 who are in wheelchairs, and 00:18:36.930 --> 00:18:39.990 this is an optional trip. I said, oh, come join 00:18:39.990 --> 00:18:41.809 us on the trip, I said to the whole class. And 00:18:41.809 --> 00:18:43.529 if these students had come to me, I would have 00:18:43.529 --> 00:18:46.670 said, no, you can't come, because we don't have 00:18:46.670 --> 00:18:49.329 a lift on the bus, and it wouldn't be safe. And 00:18:49.329 --> 00:18:51.230 after watching this guy's presentation, I was 00:18:51.230 --> 00:18:54.549 thinking to myself, well, what a jerk I am. Because 00:18:54.549 --> 00:18:57.450 my field trip, like, he's taking people down 00:18:57.450 --> 00:19:00.930 in an elevator and having them map in this really... 00:19:01.150 --> 00:19:04.690 difficult environment, I would just have to throw 00:19:04.690 --> 00:19:08.930 a lift on the bus. Like 80 % of our stops are 00:19:08.930 --> 00:19:11.329 in a parking lot. It's like as accessible as 00:19:11.329 --> 00:19:14.089 it could be. And I suddenly realized, oh, I need 00:19:14.089 --> 00:19:16.269 to be involved in this group. This is the International 00:19:16.269 --> 00:19:19.029 Association for Geoscience Diversity. And we 00:19:19.029 --> 00:19:20.990 were just building the group up then. And as 00:19:20.990 --> 00:19:23.069 part of the discussions. There was going to be 00:19:23.069 --> 00:19:24.930 a conference in Vancouver. And they said, well, 00:19:24.950 --> 00:19:26.769 why don't we try and do an accessible trip? And 00:19:26.769 --> 00:19:29.869 I said, perfect. I can run this. And the most 00:19:29.869 --> 00:19:32.710 difficult thing was getting a bus with a lift. 00:19:33.089 --> 00:19:35.809 And in fact, two days before the trip, the bus 00:19:35.809 --> 00:19:38.950 company called us in a panic and said, oh, you're 00:19:38.950 --> 00:19:40.670 going outside of Vancouver and you're having 00:19:40.670 --> 00:19:43.609 accessible students. We can't fund. We can't 00:19:43.609 --> 00:19:46.049 let you do this. The liability is too high. You'd 00:19:46.049 --> 00:19:47.650 have to pay for more insurance. And they were 00:19:47.650 --> 00:19:50.349 trying to cancel us. And I said. Oh, well, how 00:19:50.349 --> 00:19:52.109 much was the extra insurance? And they went, 00:19:52.190 --> 00:19:56.269 $100. I'm like, we're paying two grand for the 00:19:56.269 --> 00:20:00.430 bus already. Great, we'll pay an extra $100. 00:20:00.809 --> 00:20:02.849 I'll pay it in my pocket. But they were like, 00:20:02.910 --> 00:20:05.369 that's the sort of interesting barrier that you 00:20:05.369 --> 00:20:08.049 get. And this isn't accessible. This is a bus 00:20:08.049 --> 00:20:10.369 with a lift, and they didn't want to take people. 00:20:11.789 --> 00:20:14.630 on the bus that's designed to take people to 00:20:14.630 --> 00:20:16.650 accessible areas right and this is important 00:20:16.650 --> 00:20:18.109 for other people to listen to because sometimes 00:20:18.109 --> 00:20:20.390 geology can go off the beaten track you're on 00:20:20.390 --> 00:20:22.609 dirt roads everything else this is a hundred 00:20:22.609 --> 00:20:26.569 percent on paved roads yeah well maintained like 00:20:26.569 --> 00:20:28.869 there's a couple places where people scramble 00:20:28.869 --> 00:20:31.569 down but when we did that if someone was in had 00:20:31.569 --> 00:20:33.950 mobility issues we paired them with someone who 00:20:33.950 --> 00:20:36.250 didn't and so they would go down and collect 00:20:36.250 --> 00:20:38.789 a sample and bring it back and and we just tried 00:20:38.789 --> 00:20:41.920 to sort of Make sure that everybody had some 00:20:41.920 --> 00:20:44.319 amount of access. You can't have perfect access, 00:20:44.619 --> 00:20:47.160 but you could say, hey, come with us. So this 00:20:47.160 --> 00:20:50.059 trip was fascinating from that perspective because 00:20:50.059 --> 00:20:53.839 it felt very easy once I actually had the idea 00:20:53.839 --> 00:20:56.900 that I could do it. But it was groundbreaking 00:20:56.900 --> 00:21:00.259 that people didn't do things like this. And the 00:21:00.259 --> 00:21:02.940 really funny thing that we didn't consider, when 00:21:02.940 --> 00:21:05.059 most of the people on the trip are disabled, 00:21:05.319 --> 00:21:08.519 nobody is disabled. Everybody had a different 00:21:08.519 --> 00:21:10.839 disability. This is very different than when 00:21:10.839 --> 00:21:12.660 you're trying to apply to a class where you might 00:21:12.660 --> 00:21:14.440 have one or two people with a disability and 00:21:14.440 --> 00:21:16.500 they feel singled out. And so that's one of the 00:21:16.500 --> 00:21:19.500 struggles moving forward. But that trip was totally 00:21:19.500 --> 00:21:21.839 fascinating. And we had people with a wide variety 00:21:21.839 --> 00:21:25.099 of disabilities. We had two people who were visually 00:21:25.099 --> 00:21:28.480 impaired. We had a man who was almost completely 00:21:28.480 --> 00:21:33.359 deaf. And we got ourselves an ASL... American 00:21:33.359 --> 00:21:35.180 Sign Language translator for this and then we 00:21:35.180 --> 00:21:36.880 discovered that he was from India and he didn't 00:21:36.880 --> 00:21:40.799 speak American Sign Language. But it actually 00:21:40.799 --> 00:21:42.559 worked out well because that student who was 00:21:42.559 --> 00:21:44.720 the translator just sat next to him with a tablet 00:21:44.720 --> 00:21:47.940 and just was typing what people were saying at 00:21:47.940 --> 00:21:51.440 all times around him. And so he was getting the 00:21:51.440 --> 00:21:54.289 gist of what was going on and he... felt incredibly 00:21:54.289 --> 00:21:56.569 included because he could participate there was 00:21:56.569 --> 00:21:58.890 someone next to him who was constantly translating 00:21:58.890 --> 00:22:01.750 for him and he could read some lips and then 00:22:01.750 --> 00:22:03.609 get the gist of what was happening and he would 00:22:03.609 --> 00:22:05.410 sit in the front of the vest and just smile and 00:22:05.410 --> 00:22:07.369 nod when we're talking about stuff right and 00:22:07.369 --> 00:22:09.869 so it was this really fascinating experience 00:22:09.869 --> 00:22:11.609 where we had a bunch of people who were very 00:22:11.609 --> 00:22:14.150 apprehensive about being on the field trip who 00:22:14.150 --> 00:22:18.710 ended up having this awesome time and the feedback 00:22:18.710 --> 00:22:20.869 the data we'll talk about later was phenomenal 00:22:20.869 --> 00:22:24.869 yeah In fact, that's where we're going right 00:22:24.869 --> 00:22:30.130 now. Sounds great. The data. Now, I, being, you 00:22:30.130 --> 00:22:33.730 know, a volcanologist and, you know, really been. 00:22:34.470 --> 00:22:36.890 Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's not always that the 00:22:36.890 --> 00:22:38.829 data gives you a direct answer because sometimes 00:22:38.829 --> 00:22:42.769 the answer is incredibly fuzzy. Yeah. But it's 00:22:42.769 --> 00:22:44.710 different. And then when you typically think 00:22:44.710 --> 00:22:47.430 of science, you're thinking of, like, lots of 00:22:47.430 --> 00:22:51.759 data. And I'm totally ignorant of this. Sunk 00:22:51.759 --> 00:22:54.119 my proverbial teeth into only one other study 00:22:54.119 --> 00:22:57.359 for this show of a smaller sample size. And one 00:22:57.359 --> 00:23:01.740 event means only those who attended. So how can 00:23:01.740 --> 00:23:05.039 we put that data or numbers here into context? 00:23:05.519 --> 00:23:08.299 Yeah, so it's one of the constant interesting 00:23:08.299 --> 00:23:11.299 things about academia is this struggle between 00:23:11.299 --> 00:23:14.970 qualitative and quantitative data. I was once 00:23:14.970 --> 00:23:17.609 in a research talk where we spent an hour talking 00:23:17.609 --> 00:23:20.869 about the value of qualitative data and how even 00:23:20.869 --> 00:23:24.630 having one person's account can be seen as a 00:23:24.630 --> 00:23:26.910 valid data source and you can learn from that 00:23:26.910 --> 00:23:29.529 one person's account. And then someone came in 00:23:29.529 --> 00:23:32.029 late. We were talking about this qualitative 00:23:32.029 --> 00:23:35.950 project where they had five people had given 00:23:35.950 --> 00:23:38.650 qualitative interviews. And the person who came 00:23:38.650 --> 00:23:40.210 in late said, oh, it's too bad you didn't get 00:23:40.210 --> 00:23:44.099 enough numbers. Like even with qualitative data, 00:23:44.200 --> 00:23:46.059 people think, oh, well, then you can bin it and 00:23:46.059 --> 00:23:48.140 make it quantitative. And we only believe in 00:23:48.140 --> 00:23:50.000 quantitative data. You got to have a number on 00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:52.700 it. And so part of what's exciting about this 00:23:52.700 --> 00:23:55.880 work was this phenomenology that they call, you 00:23:55.880 --> 00:23:59.619 know, exploring the experience of people. And 00:23:59.619 --> 00:24:02.380 we did have quite large numbers when you look 00:24:02.380 --> 00:24:06.279 at things. So we had. focus groups both before 00:24:06.279 --> 00:24:08.539 and after and we had groups of students and then 00:24:08.539 --> 00:24:11.099 we have groups of professors and we basically 00:24:11.099 --> 00:24:15.779 just tried to typify their experience in this 00:24:15.779 --> 00:24:20.799 context to to elucidate you know how doing a 00:24:20.799 --> 00:24:23.019 trip like this changed these people's lives because 00:24:23.019 --> 00:24:25.220 it was very transformative for several of them 00:24:25.220 --> 00:24:28.079 and like I read the papers now years later and 00:24:28.079 --> 00:24:31.299 they still bring me to tears some of them Some 00:24:31.299 --> 00:24:36.140 of the quotes are just spectacular. I wasn't 00:24:36.140 --> 00:24:39.039 the slowest. Everyone wasn't waiting for me. 00:24:39.380 --> 00:24:41.500 One professor said it's the first time I've been 00:24:41.500 --> 00:24:44.539 able to be on a field trip in years. He had a 00:24:44.539 --> 00:24:47.420 progressive disability and he'd go on trips and 00:24:47.420 --> 00:24:51.410 just sit on the bus. just just to be close enough 00:24:51.410 --> 00:24:54.970 to the geology and here he was there and he and 00:24:54.970 --> 00:24:57.329 i were arguing about whether it was water or 00:24:57.329 --> 00:24:59.250 glaciers that carved this thing you know and 00:24:59.250 --> 00:25:01.450 that experience is something he missed we had 00:25:01.450 --> 00:25:04.130 a we had a visually impaired student who was 00:25:04.130 --> 00:25:07.750 a going into geophysics and when people asked 00:25:07.750 --> 00:25:11.220 what are you majoring in they would say She would 00:25:11.220 --> 00:25:12.960 say, oh, I'm going to go in geophysics. And they 00:25:12.960 --> 00:25:15.359 would go, oh, honey, why are you making it hard 00:25:15.359 --> 00:25:17.819 on yourself? And she said, it feels like I'm 00:25:17.819 --> 00:25:20.259 giving people the wrong answer because science 00:25:20.259 --> 00:25:23.259 is too hard for someone with a disability. And, 00:25:23.359 --> 00:25:26.380 you know, from this person, you know, who arrived, 00:25:26.619 --> 00:25:30.700 had a seeing eye dog that was brand new to them 00:25:30.700 --> 00:25:32.779 and like was struggling to get out on the bus 00:25:32.779 --> 00:25:35.059 and afraid to ask for help to the end of the 00:25:35.059 --> 00:25:37.880 day where we're standing next to an outcrop and 00:25:37.880 --> 00:25:40.690 halfway up the hill. The little scramble is an 00:25:40.690 --> 00:25:45.670 intrusive dyke. And at the end of the day, she 00:25:45.670 --> 00:25:47.529 was comfortable enough to just turn to someone 00:25:47.529 --> 00:25:49.009 she knew who they was and say, here, hold my 00:25:49.009 --> 00:25:52.269 dog. And then scrambled up the cliff by herself, 00:25:52.630 --> 00:25:55.829 following somebody. And one of the observers 00:25:55.829 --> 00:25:57.990 on the trip came up behind me and said, all the 00:25:57.990 --> 00:26:00.670 risk analysis people at my... at my university 00:26:00.670 --> 00:26:03.730 just died of a heart attack i'm like yeah it's 00:26:03.730 --> 00:26:06.190 fine she's comfortable it's not actually that 00:26:06.190 --> 00:26:09.009 dangerous but you know like it was really transformative 00:26:09.009 --> 00:26:11.750 for people who haven't had that experience and 00:26:11.750 --> 00:26:16.450 she she as an example said i now feel like i 00:26:16.450 --> 00:26:20.410 can do this whereas before i felt like i was 00:26:20.410 --> 00:26:23.009 giving people the wrong answer when i said geophysics 00:26:23.009 --> 00:26:28.950 wow i right i Okay. I mean, you saw my facial 00:26:28.950 --> 00:26:30.869 expressions, but I didn't want to interrupt you 00:26:30.869 --> 00:26:33.390 at all throughout any of that. And I was definitely 00:26:33.390 --> 00:26:37.230 giving some colorful expressions like shock and 00:26:37.230 --> 00:26:41.750 awe. Yeah, me too. Wow. I mean, you weren't just 00:26:41.750 --> 00:26:43.970 now, but I bet you were at the time or at least 00:26:43.970 --> 00:26:47.450 internalizing it. I wasn't at the focus group. 00:26:47.470 --> 00:26:49.809 I got to read it later and it's like, oh, that's 00:26:49.809 --> 00:26:53.950 great. Oh, so you, although lived the experience 00:26:53.950 --> 00:26:57.869 of this event, you didn't realize the impact 00:26:57.869 --> 00:27:00.789 it had until well after. I did because we talked 00:27:00.789 --> 00:27:04.029 about it a lot, and I did on the day of, and 00:27:04.029 --> 00:27:06.630 I spoke to people on the day of who were just 00:27:06.630 --> 00:27:10.490 like, thank you. It was very strange for us because 00:27:10.490 --> 00:27:13.609 it really wasn't hard, and that was one of the 00:27:13.609 --> 00:27:17.269 big takeaways. It's not like we did some Herculean 00:27:17.269 --> 00:27:20.950 task here. I got a bus with a lift, and I was 00:27:20.950 --> 00:27:22.890 prepared for people who had other disabilities. 00:27:23.029 --> 00:27:25.190 And we had a variety, as I said. We had some 00:27:25.190 --> 00:27:29.589 veterans from the US who had trauma, like brain 00:27:29.589 --> 00:27:32.930 trauma from explosions. We had people with mental 00:27:32.930 --> 00:27:36.670 disabilities. We had learning disabilities. There 00:27:36.670 --> 00:27:39.630 was a woman who was supposed to be on another 00:27:39.630 --> 00:27:43.630 field trip, and that field trip left early without 00:27:43.630 --> 00:27:47.559 her. And we're like, well, come with us. and 00:27:47.559 --> 00:27:49.259 she was on the trip and she sort of became part 00:27:49.259 --> 00:27:50.700 of the group and about halfway through the day 00:27:50.700 --> 00:27:53.920 she goes wait a minute i have chronic back pain 00:27:53.920 --> 00:27:59.319 i have a disability right i mean and like most 00:27:59.319 --> 00:28:02.279 of us hope to live long enough to become disabled 00:28:02.279 --> 00:28:05.059 right i mean this is this is what all of our 00:28:05.059 --> 00:28:07.279 lives are going to be but we have this strange 00:28:07.279 --> 00:28:10.700 focus on ability no one can scale a 500 meter 00:28:10.700 --> 00:28:14.759 cliff but that technically is a disability glasses 00:28:15.480 --> 00:28:18.180 Glasses are a disability, but glasses are so 00:28:18.180 --> 00:28:20.940 perfect that they're not really an issue. And 00:28:20.940 --> 00:28:23.779 people even wear them, you know, to look cool. 00:28:24.640 --> 00:28:26.480 Glasses that have no prescription in them, right? 00:28:26.559 --> 00:28:29.559 It's different than a hearing aid. I have never 00:28:29.559 --> 00:28:32.200 worn my glasses to look cool. Several people 00:28:32.200 --> 00:28:35.920 wear glasses for fashion. People do that. I mean, 00:28:36.019 --> 00:28:39.180 sunglasses, sure. But also people wear glasses 00:28:39.180 --> 00:28:41.019 that have done a prescription in them because 00:28:41.019 --> 00:28:42.920 they don't have the connotation of growing up 00:28:42.920 --> 00:28:45.259 and feeling different, right? Oh, my gosh. The 00:28:45.259 --> 00:28:48.059 number of times I got called four eyes. Of course. 00:28:48.380 --> 00:28:50.960 I would beat the crap out of you. You're wearing 00:28:50.960 --> 00:28:52.779 glasses, so I'll give it a pass because I feel 00:28:52.779 --> 00:28:55.079 sorry for you. I always say, my mother said, 00:28:55.160 --> 00:28:56.960 never be afraid to sucker punch a girl just because 00:28:56.960 --> 00:29:00.200 she's wearing glasses. I will say she gets very 00:29:00.200 --> 00:29:05.980 angry when I say that. Obviously, you've just 00:29:05.980 --> 00:29:09.259 kind of gone through a little bit of how it really 00:29:09.259 --> 00:29:13.980 did work for the students, which clearly it did. 00:29:14.539 --> 00:29:19.500 But did it impact what could be taught? So this 00:29:19.500 --> 00:29:21.259 is one of the things that people were worried 00:29:21.259 --> 00:29:24.339 about. I would argue that a traditional field 00:29:24.339 --> 00:29:26.839 trip is not actually a great learning environment. 00:29:27.680 --> 00:29:32.059 The way I went through, it was great. But when 00:29:32.059 --> 00:29:34.960 I went through field trips in my undergrad, We 00:29:34.960 --> 00:29:37.440 would drive somewhere and someone would lecture 00:29:37.440 --> 00:29:40.519 at us and maybe we would write notes and produce 00:29:40.519 --> 00:29:43.099 a report on what they had said. And that's not 00:29:43.099 --> 00:29:46.299 an ideal learning situation. So the way that 00:29:46.299 --> 00:29:48.240 this trip worked, and we did the same thing for 00:29:48.240 --> 00:29:50.240 all trips, and I do this on all my trips now 00:29:50.240 --> 00:29:53.660 still, we go to the location, I say get in groups 00:29:53.660 --> 00:29:57.299 and go explore the area. And specific to this, 00:29:57.380 --> 00:30:01.579 we added the phrase, use all of your senses to 00:30:01.579 --> 00:30:05.470 explore the area. and we would do that and people 00:30:05.470 --> 00:30:07.430 would see different things and feel different 00:30:07.430 --> 00:30:09.109 things and do different stuff and even be able 00:30:09.109 --> 00:30:11.490 to go to different places the very first stop 00:30:11.490 --> 00:30:14.950 had a ramp that went down to the seawall and 00:30:14.950 --> 00:30:17.809 that ramp said no wheelchairs because it was 00:30:17.809 --> 00:30:20.230 quite steep and we had one person in a scooter 00:30:20.230 --> 00:30:24.130 and this woman who was in a wheelchair and I 00:30:24.130 --> 00:30:26.150 walked over I said it's up to you if you want 00:30:26.150 --> 00:30:29.279 to go down here um and the person on the scooter 00:30:29.279 --> 00:30:31.599 said no and turned around and went back to a 00:30:31.599 --> 00:30:33.240 platform where they could observe what's happening 00:30:33.240 --> 00:30:35.180 and the woman on the wheelchair i said are you 00:30:35.180 --> 00:30:38.380 okay with that and she eyed me popped a wheelie 00:30:38.380 --> 00:30:41.299 and then rode down the hill pulling the wheelie 00:30:41.299 --> 00:30:44.259 while eyeballing me as they went down the hill 00:30:44.259 --> 00:30:47.279 i'm like okay everyone has a different level 00:30:47.279 --> 00:30:51.690 of risk tolerance and obviously she was fine 00:30:51.690 --> 00:30:53.549 right and so she could get down closer to the 00:30:53.549 --> 00:30:55.589 material and look at other certain things and 00:30:55.589 --> 00:30:57.829 so but that idea that we're what we're doing 00:30:57.829 --> 00:31:00.150 is we're exploring this area we're all finding 00:31:00.150 --> 00:31:03.049 different things i specifically said bring back 00:31:03.049 --> 00:31:05.130 samples to the people who can't make it down 00:31:05.130 --> 00:31:08.269 uh you know have a discussion show what you know 00:31:08.269 --> 00:31:11.809 and it it really it really lent that community 00:31:11.809 --> 00:31:13.410 and then we would come back and say okay well 00:31:13.410 --> 00:31:16.519 what would we what did we discover and the We 00:31:16.519 --> 00:31:18.299 had a field trip handout that maybe had a couple 00:31:18.299 --> 00:31:21.140 guiding questions for each spot. But as an example, 00:31:21.180 --> 00:31:23.240 the first stop we would go to is Third Beach 00:31:23.240 --> 00:31:26.180 at Stanley Park, where you can look at the sand. 00:31:26.799 --> 00:31:30.119 There's little indicators of landslides. At the 00:31:30.119 --> 00:31:32.799 far end of the beach is a sandstone outcrop that's 00:31:32.799 --> 00:31:36.079 Eocene -aged and fluvial. There's groins on the 00:31:36.079 --> 00:31:38.960 beach to protect sand from longshore drift. There's 00:31:38.960 --> 00:31:42.039 a long view of the Salish Sea, where you can 00:31:42.039 --> 00:31:44.960 see... weather coming a long way we can talk 00:31:44.960 --> 00:31:47.480 about huge wind storms that affected stanley 00:31:47.480 --> 00:31:49.160 park there's a whole bunch of things to look 00:31:49.160 --> 00:31:51.960 at and especially having a group a diverse group 00:31:51.960 --> 00:31:54.839 of geoscientists you got really interesting discussion 00:31:54.839 --> 00:31:57.319 and people were excited because everybody learned 00:31:57.319 --> 00:32:00.000 something from someone else so i still do that 00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:02.460 with first years they're a little shyer but they 00:32:02.460 --> 00:32:05.599 still they observe things you know all right 00:32:05.599 --> 00:32:08.039 well i'll leave the the jargon in there alone 00:32:08.039 --> 00:32:13.349 for our non -geology listeners sorry But I do 00:32:13.349 --> 00:32:17.390 remember, like, the one thing that I truly remember 00:32:17.390 --> 00:32:21.710 that was grilled into me via these sorts of field 00:32:21.710 --> 00:32:25.329 trips that you're describing was describe, describe, 00:32:25.930 --> 00:32:30.329 describe, describe, describe. Yeah. That was, 00:32:30.390 --> 00:32:32.529 like, which is, to be fair. It's the learning 00:32:32.529 --> 00:32:35.950 goal verb that we love the most in geology. So 00:32:35.950 --> 00:32:38.930 it almost seems like I'm a generation ahead of 00:32:38.930 --> 00:32:41.630 you because the way you make it seem is that 00:32:41.630 --> 00:32:46.930 the next crew of teachers learned to, you know, 00:32:46.930 --> 00:32:51.009 use your senses, talk about what you feel, what 00:32:51.009 --> 00:32:54.269 you see, what you, and you're just taking it 00:32:54.269 --> 00:32:56.549 the next step further as part of the study. I 00:32:56.549 --> 00:33:00.309 literally had the classic where we drove an hour. 00:33:00.799 --> 00:33:02.579 We got out of the bus and the professor said, 00:33:02.720 --> 00:33:06.200 behind this concrete wall is the best example 00:33:06.200 --> 00:33:08.319 of an outcrop. Well, it's not here anymore because 00:33:08.319 --> 00:33:11.720 they covered it. But he drove us there and then 00:33:11.720 --> 00:33:15.240 talked about it. I had another professor in the 00:33:15.240 --> 00:33:18.039 Channel Scablands, which is an area of huge basalt 00:33:18.039 --> 00:33:21.400 and beautiful columnar basalts and features are 00:33:21.400 --> 00:33:23.859 gorgeous, like Giant's Causeway, who we went 00:33:23.859 --> 00:33:26.960 to eight different locations and in a trip of 00:33:26.960 --> 00:33:29.160 40 people held up an eight and a half by 11. 00:33:29.900 --> 00:33:35.259 a geochemical excel graph and talk for 45 minutes 00:33:35.259 --> 00:33:38.019 about the geochemistry of these rocks. What? 00:33:38.180 --> 00:33:40.599 Which was the most horrifying field trip I've 00:33:40.599 --> 00:33:42.619 ever been on in my life. I have never been on 00:33:42.619 --> 00:33:45.859 anything that could approach that monstrosity 00:33:45.859 --> 00:33:48.220 of terribleness. Well, I'm an angry old man, 00:33:48.380 --> 00:33:53.640 Jeff. Wow. Wow. You've lived through some... 00:33:54.059 --> 00:33:58.440 I've seen some stuff. Yeah. Okay. But that idea 00:33:58.440 --> 00:34:00.539 of having activities and doing things there. 00:34:00.660 --> 00:34:03.299 And yeah, describe is part of it. But we go for, 00:34:03.460 --> 00:34:05.759 especially with a first year trip, what do you 00:34:05.759 --> 00:34:08.000 observe? And then what can you interpret from 00:34:08.000 --> 00:34:10.300 that? And we try not to get too far into the 00:34:10.300 --> 00:34:13.840 just take some notes. Well, I mean, what do you 00:34:13.840 --> 00:34:16.239 observe? That's the describe, right? It is. It 00:34:16.239 --> 00:34:18.780 is. Although it's a little friendlier to the 00:34:18.780 --> 00:34:22.670 students. Sure. Because it's describe is. You 00:34:22.670 --> 00:34:24.389 want to find the thing that I want you to find, 00:34:24.449 --> 00:34:27.110 whereas what do you observe is literally what 00:34:27.110 --> 00:34:28.750 do you see here? What's interesting to you? What 00:34:28.750 --> 00:34:30.690 stands out? It's funny. I never got that impression. 00:34:30.889 --> 00:34:33.710 The impression that I got from describe was write 00:34:33.710 --> 00:34:35.869 down everything you notice. Everything. It doesn't 00:34:35.869 --> 00:34:37.789 matter if it's useful or not. Well, that's good. 00:34:38.289 --> 00:34:41.090 And now interpret. And if your interpretation 00:34:41.090 --> 00:34:43.530 is wrong, as long as your description has everything 00:34:43.530 --> 00:34:46.860 there, you can always reinterpret. Fair. Yeah. 00:34:46.940 --> 00:34:49.380 And you can thank Kelly Russell, which is also 00:34:49.380 --> 00:34:52.539 a UBC professor, actually, even though there 00:34:52.539 --> 00:34:55.360 is, I guess, maybe not at the faculty level, 00:34:55.460 --> 00:34:57.380 never at the faculty level, but the institution 00:34:57.380 --> 00:35:00.980 level from where I graduated to at SFU to UBC, 00:35:01.039 --> 00:35:05.019 there is some kind of competition, I guess. So 00:35:05.019 --> 00:35:09.079 having come from SFU. I know from SFU's perspective 00:35:09.079 --> 00:35:12.039 that UBC is the rival school. And having been 00:35:12.039 --> 00:35:15.139 at UBC, UBC occasionally remembers that there 00:35:15.139 --> 00:35:18.480 are two universities in the lower class, which 00:35:18.480 --> 00:35:21.159 I find very adorable. It is very adorable. But 00:35:21.159 --> 00:35:22.579 that's almost an aside because I want to get 00:35:22.579 --> 00:35:26.159 back to what we're talking about and kind of 00:35:26.159 --> 00:35:27.880 switch it on its head because the other part 00:35:27.880 --> 00:35:30.780 of the whole story is the staff or the teachers. 00:35:31.199 --> 00:35:34.800 Yeah. Were they surprised about how it all went 00:35:34.800 --> 00:35:37.030 and what did they say? Well, and we thought it 00:35:37.030 --> 00:35:39.110 would all be teachers who were able -bodied paired 00:35:39.110 --> 00:35:41.610 with disabled students or students with disabilities, 00:35:41.789 --> 00:35:45.449 I should say. But it wasn't because many of the 00:35:45.449 --> 00:35:48.170 professors had disabilities and their discussions 00:35:48.170 --> 00:35:51.250 were interesting. For example, the professors 00:35:51.250 --> 00:35:53.889 spent a lot of time trying to define disability, 00:35:54.329 --> 00:35:56.730 which was an interesting part of their discussion. 00:35:56.809 --> 00:35:59.530 And several of them had a disability and were 00:35:59.530 --> 00:36:04.010 still... grappling with this thing but yeah they 00:36:04.010 --> 00:36:06.389 also many of them also had a similar experience 00:36:06.389 --> 00:36:08.710 like oh i didn't feel like i was a bother but 00:36:08.710 --> 00:36:10.690 this idea that they were also trying to think 00:36:10.690 --> 00:36:13.429 through the meta level of like who gets to be 00:36:13.429 --> 00:36:16.210 here and who belongs and which disabilities are 00:36:16.210 --> 00:36:18.769 valid which was a very interesting discussion 00:36:18.769 --> 00:36:21.630 and does mirror professors without disabilities 00:36:21.630 --> 00:36:25.070 as well like which disability is valid right 00:36:25.070 --> 00:36:28.630 like wow that is so human right like someone 00:36:28.630 --> 00:36:30.969 in a wheelchair you know has a mobility disability 00:36:30.969 --> 00:36:34.750 but somebody who has like a chronic pain who 00:36:34.750 --> 00:36:39.170 appears not to have a disability that's a much 00:36:39.170 --> 00:36:42.050 different problem we did uh years later we did 00:36:42.050 --> 00:36:45.309 a similar trip to mammoth cave coming full circle 00:36:45.309 --> 00:36:48.889 and they brought a photographer to take pictures 00:36:48.889 --> 00:36:51.380 of the trip And I was watching the photographer 00:36:51.380 --> 00:36:53.739 at the first stop. We were actually inside the 00:36:53.739 --> 00:36:56.340 cave. And he kept taking pictures of the two 00:36:56.340 --> 00:36:59.420 people in wheelchairs. And I finally went over 00:36:59.420 --> 00:37:02.780 to him and said, hey. He goes, yeah. I go, everybody 00:37:02.780 --> 00:37:05.500 on this trip has a disability. And he went, what? 00:37:06.400 --> 00:37:09.219 Because the photographer was only thinking of 00:37:09.219 --> 00:37:12.559 the people in wheelchairs. And so I guess the 00:37:12.559 --> 00:37:16.849 professors or the ones that were. In the lecturer 00:37:16.849 --> 00:37:19.849 position, we're also struggling with this idea. 00:37:20.449 --> 00:37:23.409 Yeah, yeah, it's a hard idea. Disability is a 00:37:23.409 --> 00:37:26.570 hard thing to define, and we tend to, as a knee 00:37:26.570 --> 00:37:28.469 -jerk reaction in our society, consider it as 00:37:28.469 --> 00:37:30.909 a medical model. This is a deficiency that medicine 00:37:30.909 --> 00:37:34.739 can cure. Or this is an identity rather than 00:37:34.739 --> 00:37:36.820 this is an attribute that a human has, right? 00:37:36.900 --> 00:37:40.340 It's very, and I'm being inarticulate as someone 00:37:40.340 --> 00:37:44.460 who is mostly able -bodied. You know, I'm coming 00:37:44.460 --> 00:37:47.079 to these ideas late, obviously. Like, I was the 00:37:47.079 --> 00:37:49.559 person saying, who would have said, no, you can't 00:37:49.559 --> 00:37:51.000 come on the trip because you're in a wheelchair. 00:37:51.260 --> 00:37:54.280 Which I, the regret I have about this is staggering. 00:37:54.500 --> 00:37:58.340 It's kind of amazing. But, I mean, that's, I 00:37:58.340 --> 00:38:01.079 guess. One of the wonderful things about science 00:38:01.079 --> 00:38:04.019 is having the curiosity to ask questions and 00:38:04.019 --> 00:38:07.519 learn, right? Yeah. And maybe this is something 00:38:07.519 --> 00:38:10.119 I'm coming to late, even within the podcast, 00:38:10.179 --> 00:38:15.900 is in science we try so hard to remove the human 00:38:15.900 --> 00:38:19.570 from the whole conversation. Maybe the human 00:38:19.570 --> 00:38:22.010 doesn't need to be in the equation, but you can't 00:38:22.010 --> 00:38:25.210 remove them from the conversation. I often start 00:38:25.210 --> 00:38:27.610 out my first year classes by reminding them that 00:38:27.610 --> 00:38:31.429 they are in fact a bag of meat and the meat is 00:38:31.429 --> 00:38:35.010 driving. And if you're tired or hungry or cranky, 00:38:35.050 --> 00:38:37.369 like that's a thing you have to consider as a 00:38:37.369 --> 00:38:39.289 scientist is how that affects you. I remember 00:38:39.289 --> 00:38:42.289 my professor saying to me, don't go out in the 00:38:42.289 --> 00:38:44.769 rain because you won't be able to trust the data. 00:38:45.650 --> 00:38:47.510 you're going to have to go back and remeasure 00:38:47.510 --> 00:38:49.050 those things because you're going to do a bad 00:38:49.050 --> 00:38:52.170 job. And I thought that was a really sort of 00:38:52.170 --> 00:38:54.789 interesting perspective. It's hard in Vancouver 00:38:54.789 --> 00:38:56.969 if you're in the winter, but it's an interesting 00:38:56.969 --> 00:39:00.289 perspective that you want to plan what your fieldwork 00:39:00.289 --> 00:39:03.309 is so that it's things you can rely on and remembering 00:39:03.309 --> 00:39:05.389 that if you're cold and your hands are shaking, 00:39:05.449 --> 00:39:07.530 you're not going to be working hard on getting 00:39:07.530 --> 00:39:09.610 that fracture measurement the way you might on 00:39:09.610 --> 00:39:14.159 a beautiful sunny day. So moving forward. Given 00:39:14.159 --> 00:39:19.300 your position in the pedagogy of the earth science 00:39:19.300 --> 00:39:22.539 department at UBC, I assume some of this is being 00:39:22.539 --> 00:39:24.860 incorporated into the classroom writ large and 00:39:24.860 --> 00:39:27.559 I guess into the field trips as well? Yeah, so 00:39:27.559 --> 00:39:31.039 in this classroom we often, so there's an architectural 00:39:31.039 --> 00:39:34.099 term called universal design. So for example, 00:39:34.219 --> 00:39:37.960 sliding automatic door makes life easier for 00:39:37.960 --> 00:39:40.800 everyone. but is also helpful for people with 00:39:40.800 --> 00:39:42.760 a disability. So you want to universal design 00:39:42.760 --> 00:39:45.619 things that affect the broadest amount of people. 00:39:45.760 --> 00:39:48.860 So in universal design for learning, for example, 00:39:48.860 --> 00:39:52.800 having a white background with black text and 00:39:52.800 --> 00:39:55.360 high contrast makes it easier for people with 00:39:55.360 --> 00:39:58.400 visual disabilities, but also makes it easier 00:39:58.400 --> 00:40:00.460 for everyone. If you have a yellow background 00:40:00.460 --> 00:40:02.659 and red text, that's hard to read, right? And 00:40:02.659 --> 00:40:05.619 so... So that's one of the ways that it goes 00:40:05.619 --> 00:40:08.579 in there. It's very tricky. Making a class accessible 00:40:08.579 --> 00:40:12.159 is not like a one and done because so often the 00:40:12.159 --> 00:40:15.099 accommodations you want to make for people are 00:40:15.099 --> 00:40:17.820 going to be unique. The way one person who's 00:40:17.820 --> 00:40:21.440 visually impaired deals with their disability 00:40:21.440 --> 00:40:24.599 is going to be different than another. One of 00:40:24.599 --> 00:40:27.440 the people on that trip actually has a genetic. 00:40:28.389 --> 00:40:31.610 a deteriorating uh deterioration of the cones 00:40:31.610 --> 00:40:34.469 or the rods i forget which in her eye and her 00:40:34.469 --> 00:40:39.130 she is an identical twin but uh her deterioration 00:40:39.130 --> 00:40:41.349 started earlier so she was completely blind at 00:40:41.349 --> 00:40:44.510 18 and spent much of her life pretending not 00:40:44.510 --> 00:40:47.269 to have deterioration of vision well her sister's 00:40:47.269 --> 00:40:50.409 vision didn't go until like 29 so this friend 00:40:50.409 --> 00:40:54.130 of mine you can't tell that she's almost completely 00:40:54.130 --> 00:40:56.630 blind and when you talk she'll look you in the 00:40:56.630 --> 00:41:01.019 eye awesome her sister tries to do it and can't 00:41:01.019 --> 00:41:03.639 and they both have a very different expression 00:41:03.639 --> 00:41:07.280 of genetically identical disabilities right so 00:41:07.280 --> 00:41:10.139 how you accommodate people is tricky and what's 00:41:10.139 --> 00:41:12.159 challenging for us at the university is you often 00:41:12.159 --> 00:41:15.119 find out about accommodations on the first day 00:41:15.119 --> 00:41:17.690 so you aren't Finding out in June that you're 00:41:17.690 --> 00:41:19.690 going to have a person who's visually impaired 00:41:19.690 --> 00:41:23.949 in your paleontology lab, for example, you find 00:41:23.949 --> 00:41:26.750 out on September 5th that that happens. That 00:41:26.750 --> 00:41:29.530 makes that difficult. And so communities like 00:41:29.530 --> 00:41:31.789 the International Association for Geoscience 00:41:31.789 --> 00:41:34.590 Diversity are wonderful. We have these listservs 00:41:34.590 --> 00:41:37.170 that are super quiet. And then September and 00:41:37.170 --> 00:41:40.309 January are flooded with people saying, I have 00:41:40.309 --> 00:41:42.150 a person with this disability in this class. 00:41:42.250 --> 00:41:44.949 Does anyone have resources? How do you... How 00:41:44.949 --> 00:41:48.130 do you show three -dimensional models to a student 00:41:48.130 --> 00:41:52.409 with a visual disability? I was very lucky to 00:41:52.409 --> 00:41:55.989 have a TA once who was hired as a note -taker 00:41:55.989 --> 00:42:00.210 for a person with low vision. And I handed her 00:42:00.210 --> 00:42:05.090 a pile of Silly Putty one day, and she was able 00:42:05.090 --> 00:42:08.360 to quickly shape the Silly Putty. into things 00:42:08.360 --> 00:42:11.960 that this person could touch and so he was able 00:42:11.960 --> 00:42:13.860 to see the three -dimensional things because 00:42:13.860 --> 00:42:16.980 he could hold them oh wow and she had just come 00:42:16.980 --> 00:42:18.719 up with it on the fly because i happened to hand 00:42:18.719 --> 00:42:21.619 her some silly putty so he could feel it i would 00:42:21.619 --> 00:42:25.880 not be able to create that I wouldn't have either. 00:42:26.159 --> 00:42:29.639 But she had the bandwidth and was hired to try 00:42:29.639 --> 00:42:31.539 to accommodate for him and was a really keen 00:42:31.539 --> 00:42:34.500 and engaged note -taker in the ability to do 00:42:34.500 --> 00:42:36.980 this. So now I know, if I have a student with 00:42:36.980 --> 00:42:39.159 a visual disability, I need to make sure they're 00:42:39.159 --> 00:42:42.340 paired with someone who has silly putty. And 00:42:42.340 --> 00:42:45.519 the ability to quickly shape something reasonable. 00:42:45.960 --> 00:42:48.880 It's rough and ready, right? Sure, to a point, 00:42:48.920 --> 00:42:53.320 but I mean... It's got to be something. So it 00:42:53.320 --> 00:42:55.659 turns out things like paleontology are actually 00:42:55.659 --> 00:42:59.179 wonderful because there's actually several well 00:42:59.179 --> 00:43:03.420 -known blind paleontologists because you can 00:43:03.420 --> 00:43:08.079 really feel the fossils, right? So it's knowing 00:43:08.079 --> 00:43:10.739 where those things are more useful and where 00:43:10.739 --> 00:43:12.900 in some cases might actually be an advantage. 00:43:13.739 --> 00:43:16.800 Okay. So I suppose it's time to kind of like 00:43:16.800 --> 00:43:18.940 circle back to the problem in a different way. 00:43:19.099 --> 00:43:22.500 Okay. As framed at the top, I think by and large, 00:43:22.599 --> 00:43:27.159 science, we buy in. We realize we want, again, 00:43:27.480 --> 00:43:29.699 this is by and large the community as a whole 00:43:29.699 --> 00:43:31.920 and supposed to the individual. We want to make 00:43:31.920 --> 00:43:34.079 things better. That is, we want to learn things 00:43:34.079 --> 00:43:38.460 better. We want to, you know, move forward our 00:43:38.460 --> 00:43:41.219 understanding. Let's change the world for better. 00:43:41.340 --> 00:43:44.619 At least that's the sentiment. But we also have 00:43:44.619 --> 00:43:47.519 this other side of us, which is also like too 00:43:47.519 --> 00:43:53.409 slow to move. Yeah. So in practice, are we starting 00:43:53.409 --> 00:43:57.650 to see things change? Definitely. Definitely. 00:43:57.730 --> 00:44:00.750 Hugely so. So, you know, we did this paper years 00:44:00.750 --> 00:44:03.690 ago. Lots of people have... How many years ago? 00:44:04.389 --> 00:44:08.210 10, I think was the... 2015 was the original 00:44:08.210 --> 00:44:11.789 work. the field trip the last paper was like 00:44:11.789 --> 00:44:14.829 2018 or 19 when it was published when we finally 00:44:14.829 --> 00:44:17.769 got i think it was the professor's uh paper was 00:44:17.769 --> 00:44:19.489 finally published we had some trouble getting 00:44:19.489 --> 00:44:23.869 it published for bad reasons um anyway reviewer 00:44:23.869 --> 00:44:28.090 oh pardon me reviewer three it's always uh yeah 00:44:28.090 --> 00:44:31.929 reviewer three had no uh experience with accessibility 00:44:31.929 --> 00:44:36.489 and was challenging us on definitions in really 00:44:36.489 --> 00:44:40.309 ableist ways And we actually eventually pulled 00:44:40.309 --> 00:44:43.449 from that paper and went somewhere else, which 00:44:43.449 --> 00:44:46.650 was that was we were kind of laughing about it. 00:44:46.690 --> 00:44:49.010 But, you know, it spread things out nicely. But 00:44:49.010 --> 00:44:51.250 no, things have changed a lot. So in our department, 00:44:51.289 --> 00:44:54.260 for example, the faculty of science has. program 00:44:54.260 --> 00:44:58.440 every summer where you can basically apply and 00:44:58.440 --> 00:45:01.380 you can join the Universal Design for Learning 00:45:01.380 --> 00:45:04.099 Scholars program and rework one of your courses 00:45:04.099 --> 00:45:06.980 to be more accessible. So, for example, I think 00:45:06.980 --> 00:45:09.860 the first project we did a few years ago, they 00:45:09.860 --> 00:45:14.199 redesigned mineralogy to account for a fairly 00:45:14.199 --> 00:45:17.179 common disability, colorblindness, which is a 00:45:17.179 --> 00:45:19.780 struggle in mineralogy. Not as much as it could 00:45:19.780 --> 00:45:23.799 be, but, you know, color can be important. Yeah, 00:45:23.799 --> 00:45:26.139 especially in biology and under the microscope. 00:45:26.300 --> 00:45:29.400 Yeah. And so knowing how to deal with that, we 00:45:29.400 --> 00:45:31.380 now have that built into this lab. So that's 00:45:31.380 --> 00:45:33.719 a great example of the type of thing that's happening. 00:45:33.920 --> 00:45:36.900 There's been a lot of good work done in my department 00:45:36.900 --> 00:45:40.619 alone because I've been doing this work. You 00:45:40.619 --> 00:45:43.599 know, when a student with a disability enters 00:45:43.599 --> 00:45:45.320 third year field school, the professors immediately 00:45:45.320 --> 00:45:47.300 come to me and say, OK, well, what can we do 00:45:47.300 --> 00:45:51.340 here and how can we help this person? You know, 00:45:51.340 --> 00:45:53.860 COVID actually in some ways helped this a lot 00:45:53.860 --> 00:45:56.980 because we had to struggle with the idea of online 00:45:56.980 --> 00:46:00.059 learning. And so there's days in the field, in 00:46:00.059 --> 00:46:02.340 our field school, where if someone can't go, 00:46:02.519 --> 00:46:04.739 potentially just because they've been injured 00:46:04.739 --> 00:46:07.440 and rolled their ankle, they can instead do the 00:46:07.440 --> 00:46:11.539 online module for that day. Which, that's great. 00:46:11.760 --> 00:46:14.480 Yeah. The fact that we have this alternate process. 00:46:14.780 --> 00:46:18.489 We also are more likely... I think 10 years ago, 00:46:18.590 --> 00:46:21.489 if someone said, I can't do field school, we 00:46:21.489 --> 00:46:24.449 would have said, you can't be a geologist. Whereas 00:46:24.449 --> 00:46:26.929 now, people are more open to finding alternatives. 00:46:27.289 --> 00:46:29.809 And there are alternative field schools that 00:46:29.809 --> 00:46:32.190 are built around accessibility. So a colleague 00:46:32.190 --> 00:46:35.170 of mine, Anita Marshall from the University of 00:46:35.170 --> 00:46:39.289 Florida, I think, somewhere in Florida, has an 00:46:39.289 --> 00:46:41.630 accessible field school that's modeled after 00:46:41.630 --> 00:46:44.570 NASA missions. And so they split the class into 00:46:44.570 --> 00:46:47.579 two groups. And one of the groups, is mission 00:46:47.579 --> 00:46:51.099 control. And they might even be at home and they're 00:46:51.099 --> 00:46:54.159 interacting completely in an online setting and 00:46:54.159 --> 00:46:56.820 they design what the day is going to be and they 00:46:56.820 --> 00:46:58.559 design what the plan is going to be and the people 00:46:58.559 --> 00:47:01.480 who are able -bodied and able to be there, they're 00:47:01.480 --> 00:47:03.239 the ones who are actually doing the away mission, 00:47:03.360 --> 00:47:07.119 as it were. And it's a beautiful design and then 00:47:07.119 --> 00:47:09.820 everyone works together to produce an output. 00:47:10.239 --> 00:47:13.500 How often do they have Miami? We have a problem. 00:47:13.840 --> 00:47:16.139 Right, exactly. They actually go to Arizona. 00:47:17.460 --> 00:47:19.380 Right, right. The people are back in Florida, 00:47:19.500 --> 00:47:21.039 right? I don't know where in Florida. Or Seattle 00:47:21.039 --> 00:47:24.900 or wherever. And so we actually, we sent a student 00:47:24.900 --> 00:47:29.369 there from... vancouver who actually went down 00:47:29.369 --> 00:47:32.190 and was part of the away team a student who had 00:47:32.190 --> 00:47:34.269 a variety of disabilities that didn't affect 00:47:34.269 --> 00:47:36.769 their mobility and so they were able to participate 00:47:36.769 --> 00:47:39.989 in this right and so that's an example of the 00:47:39.989 --> 00:47:41.650 type of things that are happening i think people 00:47:41.650 --> 00:47:44.449 being really creative and i think you know the 00:47:44.449 --> 00:47:47.670 the thing about accessibility when i said uh 00:47:47.670 --> 00:47:50.269 you can't or when i would have said you can't 00:47:50.269 --> 00:47:55.590 come that's a rude but be probably illegal and 00:47:55.590 --> 00:47:57.690 would open the university up to like a charter 00:47:57.690 --> 00:48:00.269 of right and freedom challenge right like i i'm 00:48:00.269 --> 00:48:02.389 required to have something that they could do 00:48:02.389 --> 00:48:06.349 right and in the u .s title nine i think the 00:48:06.349 --> 00:48:08.150 laws are called like that you have these things 00:48:08.150 --> 00:48:10.670 where you're required to accommodate and accommodation 00:48:10.670 --> 00:48:13.849 doesn't mean make it perfect it's to do something 00:48:13.849 --> 00:48:15.969 that makes them involved that helps them replace 00:48:15.969 --> 00:48:18.929 the learning and that that's what's happening 00:48:18.929 --> 00:48:24.889 more i find so there's hope Before we move on 00:48:24.889 --> 00:48:27.429 to some of the lighter side of things, thank 00:48:27.429 --> 00:48:31.610 you. Oh, my pleasure. It's a conversation that 00:48:31.610 --> 00:48:34.570 I don't, we don't have enough in sciences as 00:48:34.570 --> 00:48:37.050 like between sciences, like between scientists 00:48:37.050 --> 00:48:40.670 in the open. It does happen, but it's never like 00:48:40.670 --> 00:48:44.969 fully out in the open. Like, and I don't know 00:48:44.969 --> 00:48:48.289 about you, but, and I'm not willing to get into 00:48:48.289 --> 00:48:51.550 it ever in a public sphere. There is a lot of 00:48:51.550 --> 00:48:54.429 stuff that goes on in academia and not necessarily 00:48:54.429 --> 00:48:56.050 with the colleagues right beside you, but like 00:48:56.050 --> 00:48:58.510 it is an institutional level where you're kind 00:48:58.510 --> 00:49:03.610 of like, damn, we really need to do more. Yeah. 00:49:03.710 --> 00:49:06.250 And I think we're getting a lot better. I think 00:49:06.250 --> 00:49:10.650 that things are less likely to happen and have 00:49:10.650 --> 00:49:12.829 the bad outcome. We're more likely to have people 00:49:12.829 --> 00:49:15.550 accommodated. We have the Centers for Accessibility, 00:49:15.690 --> 00:49:18.170 which is common everywhere. They're mostly focused 00:49:18.170 --> 00:49:22.590 on exams. But for people with more severe disabilities, 00:49:22.809 --> 00:49:25.369 like my students who are visually impaired, they 00:49:25.369 --> 00:49:27.510 do other things and they focus on lectures. So 00:49:27.510 --> 00:49:29.369 I think improvements are happening. In one of 00:49:29.369 --> 00:49:31.309 our lecture rooms, there's a sign on it. There's 00:49:31.309 --> 00:49:33.690 an office chair, a rotating, comfortable office 00:49:33.690 --> 00:49:35.570 chair with a sign on it that says, please leave 00:49:35.570 --> 00:49:37.889 this here. This is for students with disabilities, 00:49:37.909 --> 00:49:40.090 a specific disability who can't sit on the hard 00:49:40.090 --> 00:49:42.510 plastic chair. You know, you see this more and 00:49:42.510 --> 00:49:46.170 more often. So it does give me hope. OK, so with 00:49:46.170 --> 00:49:48.679 the harder side of the conversation done. Do 00:49:48.679 --> 00:49:53.019 you know you have an IMDB page? I did not. Oh. 00:49:53.440 --> 00:49:56.099 You told me. I went and looked it up. Yeah. So 00:49:56.099 --> 00:49:59.480 as longtime listeners know, I actually do give 00:49:59.480 --> 00:50:01.719 a fair bit of the questions, not all of them, 00:50:01.739 --> 00:50:03.559 to the guest ahead of time. And this was one 00:50:03.559 --> 00:50:06.059 of the questions you saw. So you did not know 00:50:06.059 --> 00:50:08.699 you had one. No. And then I looked at it, I think. 00:50:09.039 --> 00:50:11.840 It must be that Global News automatically uploads 00:50:11.840 --> 00:50:14.400 all interviews, which is funny because it makes 00:50:14.400 --> 00:50:16.460 me want to go in there and put in like the Czech 00:50:16.460 --> 00:50:21.380 and the CTV and the CBC, maybe throw on. I have 00:50:21.380 --> 00:50:24.739 one ridiculous YouTube video that a colleague 00:50:24.739 --> 00:50:27.739 of mine who is a little more tech savvy filmed 00:50:27.739 --> 00:50:33.369 me answering questions. frequently asked questions 00:50:33.369 --> 00:50:35.590 from students and generally being a goof and 00:50:35.590 --> 00:50:39.750 he titled it brett geo dude gilly which i find 00:50:39.750 --> 00:50:43.090 very funny okay so well thus far you haven't 00:50:43.090 --> 00:50:45.010 been terribly funny on the podcast but to be 00:50:45.010 --> 00:50:47.610 fair it's because of the context of what we're 00:50:47.610 --> 00:50:50.130 talking about so you need to send me that link 00:50:50.130 --> 00:50:53.849 so i can put it in the show notes okay i'm serious 00:50:53.849 --> 00:50:55.849 i'm gonna hold you to that i will send it to 00:50:55.849 --> 00:51:00.179 you it's horrifying but um Do you have plans 00:51:00.179 --> 00:51:02.579 to be a film star or a comedian based on this 00:51:02.579 --> 00:51:05.860 page? No, not so much. Not yet. I mean, the hope 00:51:05.860 --> 00:51:08.719 is always there, right? I will say, having taught 00:51:08.719 --> 00:51:11.960 classes, there's been times where I taught like 00:51:11.960 --> 00:51:14.960 a quarter of all UBC students took one of my 00:51:14.960 --> 00:51:18.699 classes. We had like 2 ,000 people a year were 00:51:18.699 --> 00:51:22.340 taking our natural disasters course. There's 00:51:22.340 --> 00:51:25.099 this weird minor celebrity that would make me 00:51:25.099 --> 00:51:28.860 never want to be a celebrity. I could not go 00:51:28.860 --> 00:51:31.519 to a restaurant near UBC without having a server 00:51:31.519 --> 00:51:33.599 come up to me and say, hey, I took your class. 00:51:33.820 --> 00:51:38.039 And that's weird. And that parasocial relationship 00:51:38.039 --> 00:51:41.880 is really strange. So I'm not aiming for being 00:51:41.880 --> 00:51:44.559 a comedian or a movie star anytime soon. But 00:51:44.559 --> 00:51:46.920 I'm happy to play geologist number two in the 00:51:46.920 --> 00:51:48.679 background if they need someone to swing a hammer. 00:51:49.440 --> 00:51:52.760 Geologist number two. Yeah. I mean, Glyn Williams 00:51:52.760 --> 00:51:56.300 -Jones famously has his hand in the movie Supervolcano. 00:51:58.119 --> 00:52:00.619 Is it famous? But at any rate, we have totally 00:52:00.619 --> 00:52:03.519 got into inside baseball. Glyn Williams -Jones, 00:52:03.679 --> 00:52:07.099 as we know, if you're a longtime listener, we've 00:52:07.099 --> 00:52:09.179 had him early on this year in January. We're 00:52:09.179 --> 00:52:12.739 talking about Mount Meager. Was my PhD supervisor. 00:52:13.119 --> 00:52:17.210 And we're just throwing some shade there. He 00:52:17.210 --> 00:52:19.449 literally was in the movie. But he literally 00:52:19.449 --> 00:52:22.329 was in the movie and he was their science attache, 00:52:22.329 --> 00:52:26.170 which they partly ignored him or mostly ignored 00:52:26.170 --> 00:52:28.289 him. It's a pretty good, as far as volcano movies 00:52:28.289 --> 00:52:30.889 go, that one did pretty well. They mostly stayed 00:52:30.889 --> 00:52:33.110 true to the science. It's not like Volcano, for 00:52:33.110 --> 00:52:35.670 example, which is, I don't know what they're 00:52:35.670 --> 00:52:37.570 doing there. Yeah, but at least it was entertaining. 00:52:37.949 --> 00:52:40.969 Yes, it's true. Terrible. but entertaining. But 00:52:40.969 --> 00:52:43.369 now we're at the perfect point of the whole show 00:52:43.369 --> 00:52:45.889 where you get to do any call -outs, projects, 00:52:46.170 --> 00:52:48.869 co -workers, other studies. Maybe your favorite 00:52:48.869 --> 00:52:54.449 rock of the week? Don't take me for granted because 00:52:54.449 --> 00:52:57.750 I'm nice. That's not your joke, I hope. That's 00:52:57.750 --> 00:53:03.019 not my joke. No, that's a classic. I would call 00:53:03.019 --> 00:53:04.940 out something I mentioned a couple times. The 00:53:04.940 --> 00:53:07.119 International Association for Geoscience Diversity 00:53:07.119 --> 00:53:11.119 is an international group that works towards 00:53:11.119 --> 00:53:14.440 making geology more accessible for people with 00:53:14.440 --> 00:53:17.360 disabilities. And just recently, they created 00:53:17.360 --> 00:53:19.920 a Canada chapter. So I would encourage anyone 00:53:19.920 --> 00:53:21.679 who's interested to go and see if they can join 00:53:21.679 --> 00:53:26.760 the Canadian chapter of the IAGD. Yeah. Okay. 00:53:27.440 --> 00:53:30.739 That leaves only the infamous final question. 00:53:31.449 --> 00:53:37.570 Your favorite science joke. I mean, I told you 00:53:37.570 --> 00:53:41.730 my one earlier, which is gravity sucks. But that 00:53:41.730 --> 00:53:44.949 one's not really my favorite. That's more just 00:53:44.949 --> 00:53:47.510 I like to say a stupid joke in front of 200 people 00:53:47.510 --> 00:53:50.469 and hear the dead silence. Oh, I love that. Actually, 00:53:50.610 --> 00:53:53.130 you know what? When I taught, it was like one 00:53:53.130 --> 00:53:55.090 of the funny things is that I would say something 00:53:55.090 --> 00:53:57.820 that I thought was objectively funny. And I thought 00:53:57.820 --> 00:53:59.920 for sure it was funny. And then you'd hear silence 00:53:59.920 --> 00:54:02.239 like a pin could drop. And then you're like, 00:54:02.260 --> 00:54:04.760 and I would say this, I would literally say this. 00:54:04.980 --> 00:54:09.920 I know that was bad, but I didn't get a word. 00:54:10.039 --> 00:54:12.139 And then all of a sudden the whole class, 200, 00:54:12.400 --> 00:54:14.340 300 people would start laughing. And I was like, 00:54:14.380 --> 00:54:17.940 did I need to give you permission? Yeah. I mean, 00:54:17.960 --> 00:54:19.960 the classroom is a strange place. I once had 00:54:19.960 --> 00:54:23.139 a class that did not once laugh, laugh the entire 00:54:23.139 --> 00:54:25.909 semester. Dead silence. I was like. going a little 00:54:25.909 --> 00:54:28.150 crazy, like waiting for my laughter and not getting 00:54:28.150 --> 00:54:31.389 it. And at the end of the term, every single 00:54:31.389 --> 00:54:33.469 student talked about how funny I was in the evaluations. 00:54:33.469 --> 00:54:37.429 How big was the class? 30. Oh, okay. It was just 00:54:37.429 --> 00:54:39.829 really weird. Classes have weird culture, right? 00:54:39.949 --> 00:54:45.730 Yeah. My favorite science joke. Yeah. So I tell 00:54:45.730 --> 00:54:48.889 this in my disasters class. We often talk about, 00:54:49.090 --> 00:54:51.849 I mean, if you ask a geologist where to build 00:54:51.849 --> 00:54:54.789 a house, the geologist will say, don't bother. 00:54:55.369 --> 00:54:58.429 It won't even last 10 ,000 years. But if you 00:54:58.429 --> 00:55:00.289 ask an engineer where to build a house, they'll 00:55:00.289 --> 00:55:05.409 say, how much money do you have? And I like that 00:55:05.409 --> 00:55:06.969 one because it talks a little about the mindset 00:55:06.969 --> 00:55:09.469 of geologists and engineers who are constantly 00:55:09.469 --> 00:55:13.250 in some sort of strange battle. Yet still covered 00:55:13.250 --> 00:55:16.190 by the same professional designation group. That's 00:55:16.190 --> 00:55:20.489 right, but not the same procedures. Perfect. 00:55:20.650 --> 00:55:22.789 Thank you so much for taking the time out of 00:55:22.789 --> 00:55:25.260 your day to come on Whimsical Wave Lines. My 00:55:25.260 --> 00:55:27.019 pleasure. Thanks for having me. If this topic 00:55:27.019 --> 00:55:29.360 is something you want to get further into, please 00:55:29.360 --> 00:55:30.980 check out the show notes for some of the links, 00:55:31.139 --> 00:55:34.380 including the YouTube video mentioned about Professor 00:55:34.380 --> 00:55:39.460 Brett Gilley here, Geodude. And remember, I'll 00:55:39.460 --> 00:56:03.550 see you again in two weeks. As the galaxies fly 00:56:03.550 --> 00:56:28.699 by. J.