Tour Of Sites Research Articles

The Fit Between Spatial Configuration and Idealized Flows: Mapping Flows in Surgical Facilities as Part of Case Study Visits.

This study proposes a flow mapping approach for surgical facilities that can be implemented by design teams as a component of case study tours. The provision of healthcare services involves simultaneous and closely coupled flows of people, objects, and information, and the efficiency of these flows is influenced by the spatial configuration of the buildings where these services are housed. Many architecture firms conduct case study tours to inform their design process. However, these tours often lack a structured way of documenting different flows and interpreting observations. A structured approach is needed during the design process to understand the impact of spatial configuration on healthcare flows. Site tours were conducted at four surgery centers to develop and test an evidence-based flow mapping approach. Idealized flows within surgical facilities were first identified from the literature, followed by the development of a data collection tool aimed at documenting these flows in each case study through a pre-assessment questionnaire, a physical assessment, and interviews with staff. The flow mapping tool kit was effective in allowing the design team to systematically understand the physical configuration of surgical flows across case studies. The tool also allowed the team to identify spatial configuration characteristics acting as barriers and facilitators to idealized flows. The flow mapping approach was able to provide structure for conducting these short tours more effectively via observations and staff inquiry, enabling design teams to draw more meaningful conclusions from case study tours and conduct comparisons between healthcare facilities visited.

P141: Education innovation: Equity, Diversity, Advocacy, and Cultural Safety (EDACS) curriculum

Innovation Concept: Upon completion of training, Canadian physicians are expected to respond to patient needs to advocate for change both within and beyond the immediate clinical environment.1 In the current EM curriculum, residents are not explicitly taught skills necessary to engage in clinical care nor policy change that would improve the social determinants of health (SDOH) of patients. In response to this challenge, we have developed and are piloting a 2 year curriculum on “Equity, Diversity, Advocacy, and Cultural Safety (EDACS), to equip EM trainees with the knowledge and skills to advocate and influence policy - to empower residents to act on healthcare inequities rather than simply be aware of them. Methods: We developed the curriculum utilizing the Structural Competency paradigm, a theoretical framework within which clinical and advocacy skills to address the SDOH at a structural level can be taught and practiced. This paradigm includes five intersecting skill-sets, including recognizing the structures that shape clinical interactions, developing an extra-clinical language of structure, and imagining structural interventions. Curriculum, Tool, or Material: The educational intervention will consist of 8 hour-long sessions and one 3-hour long session held over a 2-year period. The 3-hour long session will consist of a walking tour of sites accessed by individuals living in poverty in the Toronto downtown core, including a homeless shelter, a needle exchange program, and others. This session will be facilitated by a physician lead, with input at each site from community organizers. Prior to the walking tour, residents will receive an introductory session outlining themes to reflect on during and after the walking tour. Hour-long sessions will be delivered by invited healthcare providers with specific clinical expertise in the topics of discussion, which will address the care of and advocacy for various marginalized populations. Conclusion: To our knowledge, this is the first curriculum of its kind being implemented in an EM training program in Canada. Upon completion of the curriculum, students will be able to apply the five skillsets outlined in the Structural Competency Framework to address and improve upon inequitable conditions that influence patients treated in the emergency department. We intend to use formal and informal feedback from residents, clinicians, and lecturers to refine future curriculum cycles, and hope to inform similar programs elsewhere.

The role of ex-paramilitaries and former prisoners in political tourism

Northern Ireland has a turbulent history, enduring 30 years of violence known as ‘The Troubles’. Streets in Belfast that were once ‘no-go’ areas are now popular tourist attractions. They are the sites of assassinations, attempted murders and memorials to the dead - both those killed and those who killed. This article reports back on interviews and focus groups with ex-prisoners and ethnographic walks, participating in guided tours of streets, memorial sites and cemeteries, led by former paramilitaries turned tour guides. These local, sometimes controversial, figures play a key role in Belfast's tourist industry, letting those at the very centre of the conflict present and represent the city's dark and contentious history. In this article, we argue that ‘Troubles tourism’ is not about glorifying or commodifying violence, as its critics have suggested (Northern Ireland Assembly, 2008; O'Doherty, 2016; Tinney, 2017), but rather, it enables the contested nature of the conflict to be understood by allowing competing discourses to co-exist and divergent positions to be tolerated, which is politically important for peace. As such, post-conflict tourism requires a different analytical approach than that currently offered in the ‘dark tourism’ literature, which often focuses on visitors' motivations and expectations, and the commodification of history. Instead, we suggest that increased attention be dedicated to the voices of those with previous experience of violence, and the potential of this to understand current ongoing struggle, as well as consider how tourism might contribute to community transition in a post-conflict context.

A Tourism Route-Planning Approach Based on Comprehensive Attractiveness

In recent years, “free travel” has been increasingly popular. How to plan personalized travel routes based on the perspective of tourists, rather than that of tourism intermediaries, is in great need. However, some factors reflecting tourists’ preferences are ignored in the related work. What’s more, the evaluation about scenic spots is incomplete. Besides, real data sets are seldom used in existing works. We propose a novel route-planning method that considerate multiple factors (that is, the distance between sites, initial travel position, initial departure time, time duration of tour, total cost, scores and popularities of sites) comprehensively, and routes were rated by what we call a comprehensive attractiveness index. We conducted comprehensive case studies based on the real-world data of sites from the Baidu and Xiecheng websites and found that our proposed method is feasible. It is also found that the genetic algorithm outperformed two baseline ones in terms of run time.

Permaculture demonstration sites in Central America: contributions to agroecological transition and implications for educators

Central America has been an important region for the agroecological revolution, building on a history of intensive smallholder farming practices, farmer-to-farmer knowledge sharing and agrarian social movements. Permaculture is an approach to ecological site design and agroecological transition, which has grown in popularity in Central America in recent years. Permaculture’s entrance into the larger movement for agroecology in Central America raises some important questions. How does permaculture intersect with these existing forces? How can permaculturalists address perceptions that it is yet another colonialist development intervention by well-meaning Northerners? What are the implications for educators who visit permaculture demonstration sites with students? In order to explore these questions and to contribute to discussions regarding permaculture’s contribution to agroecological transition in Central America I visited two permaculture demonstration sites and participated in site tours. I discussed site features with farmers and gathered information from farm websites. I bring these experiences into conversation with the academic literature on agroecology and permaculture. I conclude that permaculture sites make valuable contributions to agroecological transition in Central America. I also identify important risks that sustainability educators using permaculture demonstrations sites should be aware of and I offer suggestions for addressing these risks.

Going on a Field Trip: Critical Geographical Walking Tours and Tactical Media as Urban Praxis in Sydney, Australia

Going on a Field Trip: Critical Geographical Walking Tours and Tactical Media as Urban Praxis in Sydney, Australia

“Some Account of an Extraordinary Traveller”: Using Virtual Tours to Access Remote Heritage Sites of Inuit Cultural Knowledge

The use of panoramic images to transport viewers to remote geographic locations can be traced back to the panorama theatres of nineteenth-century Victorian London. More recently, Google’s World Wonders Project has utilized 360-degree panospheres to capture some of the world’s most famous heritage sites. Using arrows that demarcate a defined path of movement, users can virtually tour these sites by “jumping” from one panosphere to the next. Arvia’juaq National Historic site is located near the community of Arviat. Although the heritage value of the site is highly significant, Arvia’juaq sees few national and international visitors because of its remote location. For a variety of reasons, some local Inuit also find it difficult to regularly visit the site even though it is an important source of cultural identity. In this paper, we explore how panospheres can be used to create interactive virtual tours of heritage sites like Arvia’juaq. Although there are some caveats, we argue that virtual reality (VR) tours are potentially powerful tools for connecting people to heritage sites that might otherwise be inaccessible. This has important implications for raising awareness of polar heritage and its significance to Indigenous people, as well as national and international audiences.

YOLOCAUST Project, Shahak Shapira, Berlin, 2017

Abstract Debate on (in/) appropriate behaviours at Holocaust sites has been raging ever since the field of ‘dark tourism’ (tours of sites of atrocities) rose to prominence in the 1990s. It has peaked in recent years with the appearance of the ‘Holocaust selfie’ (selfies taken at various Holocaust sites, generally designated for online publication). In 2017, Shahak Shapira launched his online project YOLOCAUST: a compendium of such selfies drawn from social media superimposed onto graphic Holocaust imagery. The project intended to shine light on the phenomenon and possibly shame its participants. This article critiques YOLOCAUST and its intentions, probing its cohesion and questioning Shapira’s success in offering a social comment on this new mode of online behaviour.

Local Food Systems Course for Extension Educators in North Carolina: Summary of an Innovative Program

Interest in local foods began in the early 2000s and has grown substantially over the past decade and a half. Although Extension is addressing local food systems in many states, training and materials in this program area are nascent. To address this circumstance, we developed a graduate course on local food systems for Extension educators. Post-course evaluations indicate increased confidence and knowledge related to local food system facilitation, implementation, and evaluation. Students cited site tours and panel presentations as the most effective course aspects and suggested improving the course by adjusting content to account for varying levels of familiarity with local food systems.

Public Archaeology 2.0: Facilitating engagement with Twitter

Public archaeology increases public awareness of archaeological issues and their practical applications to modern social concerns. Classroom visits, hands-on activities, site tours, and other events give archaeologists the opportunity to engage the public and transfer knowledge through face-to-face interaction. However, engagement ends at the conclusion of the event, leaving the audience with an incomplete understanding of the subject. Twitter, a social media application, transcends these spatial and temporal limitations by allowing sustained multi-directional communication among archaeologists, their audience and others who never attended the original event. However, there are problems with assessing the success of public archaeology projects and the presentation format differs dramatically from traditional forms of publication.

The Site Tour

AbstractArchaeological site tours are a common form of public outreach, but are they done as well as possible? Do they convey the information that is intended and are they effective in teaching about archaeology, culture, professionalism, and ethics? Over the years, I’ve been asked by cultural resource management (CRM) firms and university anthropology department field school directors for information on how to construct and give site tours. In the past, responding to this request meant cobbling together information from various sources and adding commentary. The intent of this article is to bring all of that information, along with 25-plus years of experience, together into one comprehensive narrative with the intention of providing guidance for those who have trepidations about offering site tours as a form of public outreach.

Climate Change: Adaptation, Mitigation, and Critical Infrastructures

On October 22, 2012, an African easterly wave formed in the Caribbean Sea and quickly grew into a tropical storm with frightening potential. It was the hottest year in recorded human history (though that record has subsequently been shattered), and the seawater was unusually warm. Strong winds whipped the wet Caribbean air into a frenzy as the storm moved north and west, and by October 24 the system had become a hurricane. Meteorologists named it Sandy and predicted it would sweep through the Caribbean islands and make landfall somewhere on the eastern seaboard of the United States. Sandy turned out to be more dangerous than anyone initially anticipated. The “superstorm” intensified and grew as it moved across the Caribbean, ultimately covering an area more than one thousand miles in diameter, making it one of the largest hurricanes in American history. Its winds were punishingly severe, yet the weather system was painfully slow, and the steady, relentless storm seemed to pause so that it could inflict extra damage on nearly everything in its path. Sandy hit the Atlantic coast on October 29 — the worst possible moment. Not only was there a full moon with high tides, but there was also an early winter storm with arctic air moving into the northeastern region from the other direction, and the two systems collided to form what journalists called a hybrid “Frankenstorm.” As the primary target of the attacks on September 11, 2001, New York City had spent billions of dollars over the course of the following decade shoring up its security systems and preparing for a catastrophe. Terrorism was not its only con-

Augmented Reality in a Hiking Tour of the Miocene Geoheritage of the Central Algarve Cliffs (Portugal)

Eight sites with geological (including palaeontological and geomorphological) interest (geosites) representative of the Lower and Middle Miocene carbonate deposits near Albufeira in central Algarve (southern Portugal) have been selected based on our extended working experience. The sites can be visited by hiking in a 1-day field trip. A virtual 3D tour of the georeferenced sites was produced using augmented reality technique and geoinformatic tools which integrate thematic digital layers such as geological maps and orthophotos. Every stop in the tour includes descriptive and graphic elements that can be viewed in free virtual globes (e.g. Google Earth) combined with diagrams, photographs and information sheets that quantitatively assess the cultural-touristic, educational and scientific value of the geosites. A virtual flight itinerary compatible with video formats in the new free technologies (smartphones, tablets and iPads) is also presented.

Geotourism and Economy in Irpinia (Campania, Italy)

The Landscape of Irpinia (Campania, Italy) is one of the few Italian landscapes which, to a large extent, has been preserved from the Great Transformation which started after World War II. Both the natural architectures and the environmental specificities of this area testify an almost perfect maintenance of the local landscape resources, these latter resulting from the peculiar combination of geological and geomorphological features, on which the signs of civilizations superimposed are currently clearly recognizable. The Irpinian landscape could potentially show its high cultural value, also of didactic interest, in the framework of a high-quality tourism, based on winter-sports activities, naturalistic trekking, tours of archaeological sites and monuments, tasting local gastronomic products. Many Irpinian areas could represent also a link between the Human and Earth Sciences, as the geological processes always deeply interacted with the historical development of the local populations. Certainly, geotourism could create and/or increase interest around these sites of high cultural and naturalistic value, which were visited and described by learned travellers of the Grand Tour. In this way Geotourism could represent a new perspective of sustainable development for these areas, where a weak economy primarily based on agriculture didn't take advantage from the industrialization. To exploit the touristic resources, described in the first part of this paper, new abilities are required in Earth and Human Sciences to understand any mutual interaction. To the knowledge of Authors is necessary to expand a tourism with a salient, more and more identifiable cultural connotation.

The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America by Gerald Horne (review)

Reviewed by: The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America by Gerald Horne Yevan Erwan Terrien (bio) The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. By Gerald Horne. (New York: New York University Press, 2014. Pp. xiv, 348. $39.00 cloth) In Negro Comrades of the Crown (2012), Gerald Horne showed that armed African Americans allied with Britain posed a major challenge to U.S. security, from independence through the Civil War. The Counter-Revolution of 1776, which can be read as a prequel, argues that American patriots seceded to preserve slavery against the combined threat of English abolition and African rebellion. The landmark court decision freeing James Somerset in 1772 declared chattel slavery incompatible with English law and reinforced the fears among slaveholders that this “incipient abolitionism” (p. 158) might affect the colonies. The last straw came in 1775, when governor of Virginia Lord Dunmore offered to free the slaves who would desert their masters to fight for the king. Horne’s book joins a growing list of revisionist studies of the American Revolution, including Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies and Sparked the American Revolution (2005), in which legal scholars Alfred and Ruth Blumrosen advanced a similar thesis. Yet what distinguishes Horne’s argument is the omnipresence of black activity and militancy. British impulses to emancipate or enlist slaves responded to the actions of Africans themselves, who relentlessly attacked the colonists in arsons, poisonings, murders, and insurrections. “Convincing settlers that Africans would rise and murder them all,” concludes Horne, “was a charge that did not seem far-fetched in light of Manhattan 1712, Antigua 1736, Stono 1739, Manhattan 1741, Jamaican Maroons, and all the rest” (p. 229). All these revolts, and more, are covered in a narrative that pushes the temporal and spatial boundaries of American independence to place it within a broader context. Horne’s proslavery “counter-revolution” began in the late seventeenth century. As slave unrest in the West Indies forced white colonists to settle the mainland, the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688 weakened the monopoly [End Page 735] of the Royal African Company, opening a “free trade in Africans” dominated by private merchants. Slave imports and profits soared as a result, and with them the risk of uprisings, which prompted the need for European immigration and white unity. Yet, until the British victory in the Seven Years’ War removed French and Spanish possessions from eastern North America, the Catholic powers harbored and even armed African runaways and insurgents. Spanish Florida, in particular, was such a haven for rebellious blacks that it justified an antislavery buffer in Georgia. To demonstrate how the geopolitics of rebellion influenced the fragile development of slave economies, Horne takes the reader on a dazzling tour of Caribbean and mainland sites of African insurgency, from Jamaica, Barbados, Cuba, and Antigua, to Quebec, Florida, and Cartagena. While surveying reactions in England, the author privileges a regional rather than a strictly transatlantic perspective. This allows him to analyze the involvement of various northern and southern colonies in the slave trade, the plantation economy, and illicit activities such as smuggling and piracy. Horne’s polemical writing, which multiplies counterfactuals and often-anachronistic analogies, does not always make for an easy read. His overarching thesis and broad scope also lead him to paint certain events and groups with little nuance. By contrast, Woody Holton’s Forced Founders (1999) distinguished between Virginia’s smallholders, who favored an unregulated slave trade, and elites, who, eager to raise tobacco prices and limit the risk of rebellion, threatened the interests of British merchants by petitioning to tax and even ban slave imports in 1772. These quibbles aside, The Counter-Revolution of 1776 remains a fine addition to the radical history of colonial America and a welcome counterpoint to studies of black loyalists. Although Horne only uses English sources, his documentation is impressive and effective, and it offers a gold mine of references for future works on slave resistance. [End Page 736] Yevan Erwan Terrien YEVAN ERWAN TERRIEN is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Pittsburgh. His dissertation studies the...

The local food movement, public-private partnerships, and food system resiliency

Concentration and consolidation in production, distribution, and retailing have arguably reduced the diversity of US food supply and distribution channels, thus introducing vulnerabilities into the food system. This paper addresses the question of what can be done to make the system more resilient to shocks that can disrupt food supplies. We suggest that the interest connected to the local food movement extant in a wide-ranging set of public and private groups, as well as among a widening base of consumers, creates a unique opportunity to strengthen food system resiliency. We specifically focus on the supply and distribution systems of supermarket retailers. Supermarkets are major drivers of the modern food system, with US and global consolidation positioning grocery retailers as both oligopolistic sellers and oligopsonistic buyers of food. We discuss the opportunities and challenges to diversifying supermarket procurement and distribution through localization and suggest that such a shift can be most successful if it is facilitated by public-private partnerships to foster system-level change. We provide an example of one such public-private partnership in the context of the work of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (a collaboration between two North Carolina land grant universities) which has partnered with a regional supermarket chain to facilitate and promote the sourcing of local products. The substantive activities of the partnership—capacity-building training for growers and buyers, networking and peer-learning activities and site tours, support for MBA research teams and undergraduate internships, and piloting and subsequent evaluation of novel distributional techniques—are ones that can be enacted by researchers, instructors, and advocates in partnership with supermarkets and other food businesses to build more resilient systems of food procurement and distribution. Discussion of the project provides tangible examples of how public and private entities holding shared interests in local agriculture can partner as part of a holistic approach to diversifying and strengthening the food system.

Buildng the ISRPM disaster acute rehabilitation team program

Program/Project Purpose: Rehabilitation response following a natural disaster has been progressively documented as an essential strategy for recovery and relief. In order to respond quickly, rehabilitation professionals, policy makers, relief volunteers and health officials need adequate training. The International Society for Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine arranged a directive to improve rehabilitation after disasters by creating a training program built off of the first hand documentation of past disasters around the world. Structure/Method/Design: After putting together a preliminary online framework for the Disaster Acute Rehabilitation Team curriculum, three University of Michigan students travelled to China, Chile and Taiwan individually to conduct interviews with disaster victims, doctors, health officials, nurses, volunteers and hospital administration in post-disaster areas to assess their personal postdisaster rehabilitation experiences. Dozens of interviews were conducted and over 20 hours of video and over 2,000 photographs were collected. The student/physician team consolidated this information in the form of training videos for rehabiliation physicians, online quizzes, tutorials, disaster photography, and realistic disaster scenarios. We organized all of this information into a framework for initial trials as a PowerPoint presentation. Outcomes & Evaluation: The framework for the core curriculum consists of 3 modules: a module for training rehabilitation professionals who will respond immediately to a natural disaster, another module for training rehabilitation professionals who will be team leaders and a third for rehabilitation professionals who will coordinate with national emergency planning organizations and NGO’s. All of the modules have been successfully completed and edited by international disaster experts from the International Society for Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. The next step consists of making the modules internet friendly and inviting physicians to become trained in disaster rehabilitation. Going Forward: It is imperative that the rehabilitation response be rapid and efficient to improve survival rate following natural disaster. The DART curriculum provides a method for rehabilitation professionals who are involved in disaster work to plan and respond more effectively. The first-hand experience gained through interviews with rehabilitation professionals and tours of the disaster sites allowed for the production of a core curriculum and the preemptive planning for acute rehabilitation response during a natural disaster. The next challenges includes finalizing our curriculum into website format and recruiting rehabilitation physicians from around the world to become trained in Natural Disaster Response. Funding: No Funding Source As of Now. Abstract #: 01ETC096

Community health workers understanding and attitudes regarding intimate partner violence in the dominican republic

Program/Project Purpose: Rehabilitation response following a natural disaster has been progressively documented as an essential strategy for recovery and relief. In order to respond quickly, rehabilitation professionals, policy makers, relief volunteers and health officials need adequate training. The International Society for Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine arranged a directive to improve rehabilitation after disasters by creating a training program built off of the first hand documentation of past disasters around the world. Structure/Method/Design: After putting together a preliminary online framework for the Disaster Acute Rehabilitation Team curriculum, three University of Michigan students travelled to China, Chile and Taiwan individually to conduct interviews with disaster victims, doctors, health officials, nurses, volunteers and hospital administration in post-disaster areas to assess their personal postdisaster rehabilitation experiences. Dozens of interviews were conducted and over 20 hours of video and over 2,000 photographs were collected. The student/physician team consolidated this information in the form of training videos for rehabiliation physicians, online quizzes, tutorials, disaster photography, and realistic disaster scenarios. We organized all of this information into a framework for initial trials as a PowerPoint presentation. Outcomes & Evaluation: The framework for the core curriculum consists of 3 modules: a module for training rehabilitation professionals who will respond immediately to a natural disaster, another module for training rehabilitation professionals who will be team leaders and a third for rehabilitation professionals who will coordinate with national emergency planning organizations and NGO’s. All of the modules have been successfully completed and edited by international disaster experts from the International Society for Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. The next step consists of making the modules internet friendly and inviting physicians to become trained in disaster rehabilitation. Going Forward: It is imperative that the rehabilitation response be rapid and efficient to improve survival rate following natural disaster. The DART curriculum provides a method for rehabilitation professionals who are involved in disaster work to plan and respond more effectively. The first-hand experience gained through interviews with rehabilitation professionals and tours of the disaster sites allowed for the production of a core curriculum and the preemptive planning for acute rehabilitation response during a natural disaster. The next challenges includes finalizing our curriculum into website format and recruiting rehabilitation physicians from around the world to become trained in Natural Disaster Response. Funding: No Funding Source As of Now. Abstract #: 01ETC096

Stakeholder engagement: a model for tobacco policy planning in Oklahoma Tribal communities.

BackgroundOklahoma law pre-empts local governments from enacting smoking restrictions inside public places that are stricter than state law, but the sovereign status of Oklahoma’s 38 Tribal nations means they are uniquely positioned to stand apart as leaders in the area of tobacco policy.PurposeTo provide recommendations for employing university–Tribal partnerships as an effective strategy for tobacco policy planning in tribal communities.MethodsUsing a community-based participatory research approach, researchers facilitated a series of meetings with key Tribal stakeholders in order to develop a comprehensive tobacco policy plan. Ongoing engagement activities held between January 2011 and May 2012, including interdepartmental visits, facility site tours, interviews, and attendance at tribal activities, were critical for fostering constructive and trusting relationships between all partners involved in the policy planning process.ResultsThe 17-month collaborative engagement produced a plan designed to regulate the use of commercial tobacco in all Tribally owned properties. The extended period of collaboration between the researchers and Tribal stakeholders facilitated: (1) levels of trust between partners; and (2) a steadfast commitment to the planning process, ensuring completion of the plan amid uncertain political climates and economic concerns about tobacco bans.ConclusionsExtended engagement produced an effective foundation for policy planning that promoted collaboration between otherwise dispersed Tribal departments, and facilitated communication of diverse stakeholder interests related to the goal of tobacco policies. The findings of this study provide useful strategies and best practices for those looking to employ Tribal–university partnerships as strategies for tobacco control planning and policy-based research.

The career I dreamed of?

All I knew—given the limited range of professional lives I could observe from my hometown of textile mills and surrounding tobacco fields—was that I wanted to teach. When I took organic chemistry, from one of the dullest teachers I ever had, I knew I wanted to teach that and that I could do it better. When I took biochemistry in graduate school, I knew I wanted to teach that, too. In applying for the very few academic jobs on offer in the early '70s, I sold myself as a biochemist and got a small-college teaching job as one. I gradually became one. I taught happily for 37 years, including leaves for research and writing, in schools where teaching was emphasized and research was, they said, encouraged and supported—sometimes with no more than pats on the back. I watched some great students emerge from academic backwaters into the open seas of original research, while others went off into careers using science in all sorts of unexpected ways. Some wandered off. ![Figure][1] “I could only have dreamed of evading textiles and tobacco with a life of books and chalk.” ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER My wife and I moved about to meet the demands of family life. I earned tenure three times. For me, it was a game. Rules of tenure vary from place to place, but I could figure out the rules, didn't mind the work, and ended up feeling that I could wake up in the morning and get tenure on the way to the shower. I complied, sometimes cynically, with the demands of deans and chairs that I produce research or scholarship. Their prodding helped me produce numerous products I feel good about, including a book that's still in print and still helpful, I am told, after more than 20 years; a website from which many people take maiden flights into protein modeling; and a few dozen odds and ends of publications from my grasshopper mind. In the end, that work made me a better, more enthusiastic, more convincing and longer lasting teacher. So, of course, the deans and chairs were right. These products are satisfying, but they are dim background to all the students. Everywhere I taught, I was the only biochemist on campus. There are many disadvantages to such isolation, but the great advantage was teaching a full-year course all by myself, instead of taking part in committee-built courses like the one I took in graduate school. Seeing biochemistry whole trumped talking to other biochemists every day. But thank goodness for nearby schools and Gordon Research Conferences. Many important elements of my career, I could not have foreseen or dreamed of. I wish the same for you. I mean little things like the desktop computer and the Internet, which were not a gleam in any eye when I set out. Nor could I have imagined operating a molecular blackboard (Nicolas Guex's Swiss-PdbViewer) to lead vivid tours of structural elements and active sites, and then sending students off to explore thousands of biomolecular models on their own laptops. In my search for ways to help students learn, new developments meant new ideas. I don't know how to advise those of you who see so much, read so much, and shudder about what awaits you. I was very naive about the life upon which I embarked. If, somehow, I had known the effort it would take, I might have been daunted. Inexperience, interest, and engagement protected me. I simply did what seemed to be the next thing needed and followed my nose toward what interested me most at the time, shaping the work a bit, if needed, to fit external demands. I found my way mostly by watching and listening, taking my own pulse, and using common sense—leaning, as it were, toward a very general goal and a great love, keeping it fuzzy and doing what I could with what came. Specific expectations might have gotten in my way. In the details, my career was nothing like what I dreamed. I could only have dreamed of evading textiles and tobacco with a life of books and chalk. (I do miss chalk.) Nevertheless, I had the career I dreamed of. [1]: pending:yes