Vanessa Returns

I haven't used my blog since senior year of college. During my first year of teaching with Teach For America I kept a blog about my classroom.

I think it's time to come back.

Opportunities you don't find out about until you're a senior...

Honors College Undergraduate Research Grants

UA/NASA Space Grant program

CSPAN

The old men in suits discuss Teach For America's effectiveness and funding on C-SPAN.

Work in Douglas

As part of my job, I have been working with Barron Orr on a Youth-Driven Community Asset Mapping project in Douglas, AZ.

Something we have been focusing on is mapping without resources. Online software like GoogleMaps is a much less sophisticated version of the ArcGIS software that we use in our lab, but is useful in technology transfer projects just the same. We were able to use GoogleMaps to help our youth during decision making processes.

Random fun: we stayed at the Gadsen Hotel which is known for being haunted.

Teach For America

A couple articles I can appreciate as a business major heading to Phoenix to teach with Teach For America:

Fortune Magazine

BusinessWeek1

BusinessWeek2

And people think teaching won't get you anywhere...psh.

Outsourcing: Surrogate Mothers for hire

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/

I read this piece by Ms. Warner today and I still am not sure what I think of this. Economics says, "yes." I'm not sure what my heart/morals say.

The most disturbing class I've ever taken...

...Arizona Water Issues. A few fun facts about water in the Southwest (besides the fact that we're squandering it)

- there are rivers in AZ whose flow is SOLELY effluent (treated to an extent but not drinkable) water from wastewater treament facilities
- the chemicals we use to clean our water actually can react with natural organisms in the water resulting in new toxic byproducts that are potentially carcinogenic
- because of the heat the existence of these byproducts and bacteria are worse here than anywhere else in the country
- our water is filled with pharmaceutical waste that can affect the human endocrine system (ie estrogen and steriods)
- there currently are not standards for allowable levels of these pharmaceuticals in drinking water and we are only now really developing technology to extract them from water

On that note, I'm going to go get a glass of water...