Andy Fraass

Andy Fraass

Paleobiology and Paleoceanography

Time Scavengers: Anxiety in Academia

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I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Social Anxiety Disorder about a decade ago. I have had my ups and downs with them, though they’re certainly always with me. I went through a period of abnormally high anxiety, culminating in seeking help from therapists again. I wrote this post as a way to begin processing both the past and current situation as it is filtered through the disorders. It also has a few suggestions at the end about what to do (Seek help!) if you too struggle with these disorders.

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Building and Establishing the Tilly Edinger Travel Grant

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A description of how we set up a fund to support students and avocational scientists attending science meetings. Importantly, this grant is set up to act during registration, rather than as a reimbursement, like one would get from a University. The problems with that are fairly obvious!

Cabot Institute: Cancer and climate change

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My dad is a radiation physicist who works on cancer treatment. I’m a climate scientist who uses a fossil group that can be used to find oil reserves. There’s an interesting duality to both those types of science; both can be used for positive or negative. This post for the Cabot Institute explores that duality.

Teaching controversial subjects in a conservative area

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This post has been used in two places, Time Scavengers and Cabot. It describes trying to cover climate change and evolution in a religious and politically conservative state, Texas. Both subjects caused obvious friction in the course. I frequently asked the students to fill out note cards with anonymous questions or feedback, and the friction was apparent. In this post I describe both how standard teaching won’t work, and how to (in my opinion) mix into a combination of science communication and typical information-transfer teaching. Both exams and my teaching scores suggest this was working, at least somewhat, so I hope the post is helpful for folks.