Nora Demers- educational autobiography-part 2

Hey, it looks like I have to do a fast

forward here, Thio.

Make this video work properly.

So this was the 1st 15 minutes that you just

got Welcome again.

My name is Nora Talking to you about my educational

autobiography landscape.

The environment around me was very important to who I

waas traveling had a lot to do with who I

have become.

I started going to Yellowstone National Park when I was

16 years old, after my sister and went there for

the summer and got a job in the park.

So I went up the next year, just got on

the Greyhound bus, got off in Gardner, Montana, and got

got a job there for the summer and did that

for about three different summers.

I would, um, go out for the summer and not

make it back for the fall semester, but would finally

eventually make it back for spring semester.

So it took me about four years to get the

first two years of, um, Community College, Done as I

said, my dad was an electrical engineer working at a

community college.

Um, so that his kids could get a college education

for a dollar per credit hour.

That lower picture there is the Yellowstone River and Boiling

River. It's at the 45th parallel between Gardner and a

mammoth hot springs.

Incredibly beautiful place.

I remember sitting in the hot springs and in the

night with the snow coming down, an elk.

Looking at us this close up is what Mammoth Hot

Springs looks like.

That's where I worked for the first year or two

when I was in Yellowstone.

And then I ended up working in Gardner, Montana, where

I met the man who was to become my husband.

So back up a little bit.

One of those trips home from Yellowstone.

I came to find that my parents were divorcing and

my mom had moved around the block.

About 15 years later, my sister told me that the

reason that happened was because she had finally come out,

that my father had sexually abused her, which had led

to the break up.

But that's when I was diagnosed with manic depression, jumping

forward a little bit here.

This is 20 to 22 years old, where my husband

and I, um, converted a school bus in Missouri and

took that school bus Thio or again and the Pacific

Northwest. So let me see if I can catch us

up here.

Things were a little bit out of order there.

Sorry about that.

Eso I'm finally ready for higher education.

After our time in Yellowstone National Park on dhe Southern

California. I got my undergraduate degree at the University of

Missouri Rolla.

Started with some research in Professor Ron Franks Lab doing

restriction mapping and gene sequencing, looking for sort soybean gene

seed colors and then also did some research again with

the environment about toxicity of lead.

We used the model organism in this case definite definite

with sea monkeys.

So another big culture shift was going from, you know,

Leesburg, Cuba, Missouri, which was this, you know, back country

area. And then I'd go to school 35 miles down

the road and be living in higher education.

So it was quite a culture clash.

Um, if you move forward from there after I got

my bachelor's degree, we started to say what now?

So my plan was to teach at the high school

level in Missouri, but they changed the laws to make

the teacher responsible.

I thought that was inappropriate.

It did not fit with my, um, life paradigm.

So I decided I needed to get a PhD to

teach students that wanted to learn.

That's one of the assumptions I work from, and I

tell the students in my classroom, even though I recognize

that it may not always be the case.

So on the right hand side you can see the

school bus here that we bought from church, took out

the seats, scraped up the gum, turned it into our

house and headed out to Newport, Oregon.

So you might ask, why Newport, Oregon, and the Hatfield

Marine Science Center will primarily because Newport is the Dungeness

crab capital of the world.

We looked all up and down the West Coast to

find out where we might wanna live next and found

the Dungeness crab capital of the world and that there

was a Hatfield Marine Science Center there.

So we went to Oregon, um, looking for, uh, graduate

degree. So I ended up getting an interview at the

end of the day with a man named Chris Bane.

The only reason he interviewed me was he saw on

my resume that I had spent a year in England.

He's British.

So there was the connection.

I say that so that you know how much chance

plays a role in things and how you never know

what important little thing might might make a difference.

So most of his work was on schistosomiasis, and he

also had some interest in traumatic stress response.

His son had died in a motorcycle accident, so he

gave me two parameters to work within that the research

must be about innate immunity and would use rainbow trout

is the model organism.

So my hypothesis was that the fight or flight response

must be good for us to help us withstand assault.

And the hypothesis I attempted to falsify was that there

would be increases of plasma proteins in our bloodstream that

would help us fight against infection.

And these would be a cute increases within just seconds

or minutes of stress.

Again, rainbow trouts, the model organism.

But we're all animals, and the responses are the same.

In all of us showed increases of five plasma proteins

within 10 minutes of stress.

Several of those had returned to resting level by 20

minutes. Some of the earliest and Onley research being done

on such an acute immediate response to stress within minutes

seconds, rather than hours or days later, which is most

stress. So the idea that acute stress that we can

escape from is good for us, unlike chronic, inescapable stress,

which it seems like many of us put ourselves through,

um, when we study all day and don't sleep in

those sorts of things.

So I also started something I've continued to this day,

bringing together people for conferences.

I helped organize the biology graduate student conferences at the

Hatfield Marine Science Center For several years.

My girlfriend was an artist.

I would tell her what was in my head, and

she would draw it for me.

So you can see the DNA double helix and blue

on the Left Tree Cyprus tree in Newport, Oregon, in

the middle, where she drew in the different organisms.

That's an adenovirus, the spaceship in the middle.

You can see all the animals in the roots of

the trunk and in the trees.

Um, so just showing the inter relationship of life, as

does the one in the bottom where you see the

sea turtle with the world on his back within, um,

and Adam.

So these were some of the cars that we've lived

in over the years living on wheels.

We spent about 11 years living on wheels, starting in

a Plymouth Fury.

Then we bought that lightning.

Amen Van and Yellows in, uh, Santa Maria, California when

we were running a doughnut shop, stepped up to the

1956 step van, which we lived in for a couple

years until we moved back to Missouri, lived in a

cabin in Missouri that my grandmother had built and then

took off from there by buying that bus, um, and

driving it out to Oregon.

So moving on, try to finish up it.

Florida Gulf Coast University.

I came in 1997.

The U the university opened came primarily because of the

commitment to environmental sustainability.

Um, and felt that that was really important in a

place that I wanted to spend.

Um, my my life teaching so university colloquium with all

these field trips is one of my favorite experiences at

F G.

C. U.

I've done another off service learning projects, um, go for

tortoise habitat restoration as well as some work in San

Carlos part trying to improve our drainage district.

Some of the research that I'm working at now is,

um all the biology majors at F g.

C were required to do senior research, and I've got

a few main themes going.

One of them is, um, big data analysis.

So there's a sea turtle nesting data set from Collier

County. We're we're looking through that data coming through it

to see relationships between nesting and hatching, success compared to

renourishment and other changes over time, as well as looking

at predation.

Also spending a lot of time with about 20 students

for the past few years looking at chemicals in aquatic

environments and how they are messing with our endocrine system

using the model organism of Gamba Zia, the mosquito fish.

To do that, it turns out that this mosquito fish

is becoming masculine eyes the females in a number of

locations. It's a very readily visible morphological feature.

Their anal fin gets extended to look like a grenade.

A podium of the mail.

Um, these mosquito fish give live for a super neat

story. If you're interested, there's plenty about it outside my

office door, and I'd be happy to talk to you

further. Uh, endocrine disruptors are pesticides, personal care products, medications,

pharmaceuticals and plasticizers.

So I do try to spend a lot of my

time teaching people that all these plastics that they're ingesting

in these chemicals that they're bathing in are causing profound

effects on all living organisms, including humans.

I've also been doing some research with gopher tortoise.

The top one is go for tortoise relocation data for

the past 10 years from another big data set, Fish

and Wildlife Commission.

And on the bottom, there is some gopher tortoise research

about parasites at Naples Preserve a few other similar projects.

I also sponsor student research on projects that they're interested

in of their own design.

So I also dio photography, and we do a lot

of traveling with our RV.

I like orchids.

Benign neglect works very well.

Um, we have dogs in our life.

Buster Brown and Twiggy are the most recent ones, and

my favorite by far, was Gizmo.

She died a few years ago, the long hair Chihuahua.

So I think it's probably worthwhile to say, um, my

life has been framed by a really profound love for

education within the confines of a regular classroom as Dewey's,

you know, experiential education, that formal part that's happening in

the classroom but as well as all these travels and

experiences that I've had, um, in my life.

Up until now, you can see the theme of David

or talks about all experiences, the environmental education by what

is taught or what is not taught.

And you can see that I was taught and learned

from a very young age that the environment is important

and it is in danger.

The final comment I'd like to make is about Richard

Luke's book Lost Child in the Woods and Nature Deficit

Disorder. I think you can see from the travels that

I've shown you.

I didn't have too much problem in nature.

I loved being in nature and was able to spend

a lot of time in nature, and that's probably the

case until I started.

You know, my formal job is an adult being a

professor at the university where I spend so many of

my hours in the classroom and in my office looking

at a computer screen, and it's probably now more than

ever that I have nature deficit disorder.

I might go into the office and into work, Um,

at 8 a.m. And not get out until five.

And never having seen, um stepped outdoors for that entire

time that maybe have a peek out the window but

not going outside.

So, more recently, I'd say I am experiencing nature deficit

disorder. So I hope that this helped give you a

feel for what I mean by an educational autobiography focusing

on the environment.

What I've learned, who I am.

The importance of science and model organisms, structure, function, relationships.

And I thank you very much for your time, and

I look forward to seeing you in classes.

Nora Demers- educational autobiography-part 2

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