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Interview with Nalini Nadkarni

Recent Teaching History
From Lab to Living Room: Science, Public Policy, Personal Behavior; 2000-1
Temperate Rainforests: Studies in Ecology and Visual Arts; 1999-2000; 1997-98
Seeing the Forest and the Trees; 1998-99

Ecological Agriculture
Tropical Rainforests
Master of Environmental Studies Case Studies
Forest Ecology (MES Program)

Recent and Current Areas of Interest

Forest canopy studies, temperate and tropical rainforest ecology and conservation. Also, creation of a forest access facility on campus which would include a canopy walkway. The proposal is to construct it behind the library building with a walkway from the third floor that would link the storage of human knowledge with the storage of knowledge in the natural world.
I am also co-founder and president of the International Canopy Network, a nonprofit group established to facilitate communication among forest canopy researchers, educators and conservationists. We publish a quarterly newsletter and maintain an e-mail bulletin board. I am also co-editing a book on the ecology and conservation of Costa Rica, a tropical cloud forest where I do research. It will be published in 1998.

Are there particular authors/artists/thinkers whose work you interested and which you often ask students to examine?

Peter Vitousek, Stephen Jay Gould, Italo Calvino, Jerry Franklin

Are there specific areas of interest or issues you want to work with students on in the current year?

Forest ecology, protection and understanding of our campus forest and canopy research at the Wind River canopy research facility in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington state.

Specific Skills, Competence, Techniques:

Science writing, tree climbing, plant identification, links to the ecological and academic world and grantwriting.

What are key qualities you look for in student work?

That students try hard and try to improve, that they make an effort to push themselves beyond just the assignment and that they take care in their presentations.

What techniques do you use to assess their work?

Editing papers, occasional exams, evaluation of written presentations and noting seminar participation.

How do you help students assess their work?

Self-critiques of written work, evaluation of peers on written papers and oral presentations and the opportunity to revise papers they turn in.

Teaching Style:
How would you characterize yourself as a teacher?

That I'm enthusiastic, committed, and more on the traditional side of teaching than some faculty at Evergreen. I rely more on traditional methods, such as occasional exams and expecting work to be done on time. I'm demanding, interested in content and in students, but with not much available time outside of class time and office hours.
I see my role not so much to teach hard facts and figures, which are always changing, but giving students the tools on how to get information, such as library access. I'm also interested in helping students understand how they get information and that they can get information in more than one way. I like to awaken their awareness to how they learn as well as what they learn.

My role is also to prepare students for what they'll be up against once they graduate. For example, I have them write grant proposals in addition to research papers. I believe in bringing in my own background and experience to teaching. I think that's pretty effective. I try to get students to think for themselves, and to undo the harm done by the public schools, such as 'making' them think that there is one right answer. I also take self-evaluations seriously as a tool to maximize what students get out of the program.

What types of students tend to do well with you?

Those who are motivated, interested in the subject and those who are mature both in age and outlook. Also, active participants tend to do well with me, as it's easier for me to evaluate students who speak rather than those who look thoughtful.

What types of students have a hard time with you?

Students who expect things to be handed to them, those who rebel against form for the sake of rebellion, such as doing citations a certain way, and those who don't take deadlines seriously.

What do your student evaluations say about the way you come across to students?

That I'm enthusiastic, energetic, well-grounded in the discipline, that I have a lot of contacts and that I bring realness to the subject. They note that teaching is only one of the things I do, and that they wish they could have seen more of me. Students also say I'm intense and perhaps impatient.

Expectations about Contracts, Internships, and Evaluations
What qualities do you look for in a student who comes to you for work in a contract?

Ilook for students who are extremely self-directed, who know what they want to do and have moved the project far enough along so that we can have the most productive time together. I also look for students with similar academic interests to mine, and who have a clear idea of what they want to work on.

What information do you want to see when a person comes to look for a contract?

I look for a developed contract idea with evidence of a clear sense of what the student needs to complete the work and the time I will need to put into it.

Interviewer: Char Simons

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Last Updated: March 15, 2007