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Meet Dr. David A. Smith
Professional interests and activities: My current professional interests are in the areas of molluscan physiological ecology. My graduate work focused on evolutionary questions concerning the freshwater gastropods and then shifted, while at Wabash College in Indiana, to focus on more taxonomic issues in malacology. Since coming to Lock Haven my research time has been dedicated to supporting the independent work of students. Most recently I have been asked to participate in a microanatomical investigation of the land snail Euchemotrema hubrichti, a candidate for Federal species protection. HONR159 Introduction to Biological Sciences Part of the objective of my honors course is to create the sort of intellectual atmosphere I experienced as an undergraduate. One of my undergraduates professors once wrote … "[I don't simplify or trivialize concepts] … in the belief … that understanding will thereby be enhanced … I will not make concepts either more simple or more unambiguous than nature's own complexity dictates." [From S. J. Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack.] I won't talk down to my students. I won't 'dummy-down' the material – I ask those who attend my class to rise to an intellectual challenge. Lectures are discussions – I talk with my students about the subject at hand. As a member of the Harvard Class of '82 I had the opportunity to read the results of a recent survey complied by that class as part of its 20th reunion. In that survey more than 25% of the class reported that they felt they had forgotten more then 75% of what they had learned during their undergraduate years; another 25% reported that they had forgotten at least 50% of what they had learned in college. One percent reported that they felt they had remembered everything they had learned in college while 1% reported that they felt they had forgotten everything they learned at Harvard. I report these figures because I too must admit that I don't remember much of the 'data' gathered as an undergraduate. What I do remember though is that it was during those college years that I learned how to learn. It is this appreciation for learning and the tools with which to do so that I hope to impart to my students. Personal interests activities: My wife Joanna and I live and work outside of Jersey Shore on Pairodox Farm. Along with our daughters Celia and Molly we have worked to attain near complete self sufficiency. In addition to producing our own organically grown beef, lamb, pork, and poultry we raise most of our own vegetables. Our daughters are home schooled and are currently enjoying the cutting edge of home-based education as members of the Western Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School. I have been developing a growing sense of satisfaction and joy from farming. Counter to what my Boston upbringing would have predicted, I derive my deepest pleasures from family and from working the land and caring for a growing menagerie of show, breeding, and production livestock. |
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