{"id":6,"date":"2013-10-02T12:36:18","date_gmt":"2013-10-02T12:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/dkinner\/biographical-sketch\/"},"modified":"2014-07-31T09:56:03","modified_gmt":"2014-07-31T13:56:03","slug":"biographical-sketch","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/dkinner\/faculty-name\/biographical-sketch\/","title":{"rendered":"Overview of Activities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After graduate school and a post-doc stint at the U.S. Geological Survey&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/landslides.usgs.gov\/\">Landslide Hazard <\/a>team, I have been teaching at Western Carolina University in the Smoky Mountains.\u00a0 My general research focus is in hydrology and geomorphology, and I teach classes in soils, water, geomorphology, and introductory geology.<\/p>\n<p>I have been fortunate to teach at an institution, and more specifically, in a department that embraces hands-on learning and undergraduate research.\u00a0 The hands-on, student-friendly approach of our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wcu.edu\/academics\/departments-schools-colleges\/cas\/casdepts\/gnr\/index.asp\">Department of Geosciences and Natural Resources l<\/a>ead to us receiving <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wcu.edu\/academics\/departments-schools-colleges\/cas\/casdepts\/gnr\/index.asp\">the Academic Program of Excellence award <\/a>in 2012.\u00a0 I received Western&#8217;s School of Arts and Science teaching award in 2011 for my work doing active, engaged learning in classes. \u00a0My colleague Mark Lord and I received a nearly $200 K National Science Foundation\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nsf.gov\/awardsearch\/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1044623\">grant<\/a> for examining the usage of undergraduate research as a pedagogical tool in classes throughout the curriculum.\u00a0 I am very passionate about teaching, and I believe very strongly in our department&#8217;s approach.<\/p>\n<p>Currently,\u00a0Mark and I\u00a0\u00a0are working in a \u00a0research watershed in Cullowhee \u00a0in partnership with the <a href=\"http:\/\/portal.ncdenr.org\/web\/wq\/aps\/gwp\/rep\/WCU\">North Carolina Department of\u00a0 Environment and Natural Resources <\/a>. \u00a0We are investigating\u00a0questions of groundwater recharge, subsurface flowpaths an groundwater and stream water interaction.\u00a0 We have a student team that help operate the research watershed, a great group of students that are called Research Fellows.<\/p>\n<p>A description of the watershed that relates to my scientific and educational research questions can be found at: <a title=\"Western Carolina Hydrological Research Station\" href=\"http:\/\/wchrs.wcu.edu\">wchrs.wcu.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After graduate school and a post-doc stint at the U.S. Geological Survey&#8217;s Landslide Hazard team, I have been teaching at Western Carolina University in the Smoky Mountains.\u00a0 My general research focus is in hydrology and geomorphology, and I teach classes in soils, water, geomorphology, and introductory geology. I have been fortunate to teach at an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"parent":8,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/dkinner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/dkinner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/dkinner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/dkinner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/dkinner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/dkinner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/dkinner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6\/revisions\/78"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/dkinner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.wcu.edu\/dkinner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}