Confessions of an exhausted professor – I am not good at time zone changes.  I don’t know why my body doesn’t want to adjust, but everyone else here from the east coast is struggling right now as much as I am.  In meeting sessions until 9:30PM Pacific Time, when I woke up this morning at 4:30AM East Coast Time, is just brutal!  But, that’s what we do.  One of the breakfast meetings starts at 7AM tomorrow (Friday the 21st), so I don’t think I’ll make this a very long post!

We started the meeting today with a reception and dinner.  We were welcomed by our local host, Chris Kim, a geology faculty member and chair of the undergraduate research program office at Chapman University (where the conference is being held).  Next up was the President of CUR with some opening comments, and then the CUR Executive Officer.  I won’t go over all of the details of what we reviewed – reminders of the results of past voting, updates from task force meetings, etc.  Then, it was time for the CUR Divisions to break off and begin our own business meetings this evening.

The GeoCUR Division is chaired by Pat Manley from Middlebury College (below, top photo.  She is serving a two-year term as chair, and might I say, is doing an excellent job.  We reviewed all of the CUR committees that we need divisional representation on, and we began discussing what new ideas and/or projects we at GeoCUR should be taking on.  For example, in the past few years, we added a division Undergraduate Research Mentor Award and developed an online resource at SERC for Undergraduate Research as Teaching Practice.  So, what’s next for our division?  Stay tuned – more conversations to come tomorrow!

(Unfortunately, I couldn’t fit everyone in the photo because of how wide the room is – but there really are 16 GeoCUR Councilors at this meeting!)