What would you like students to know about you?

GG: I value a sense of humor, particularly when it facilitates learning. I am fascinated by virtually every topic. I am most excited when my preconceptions or existing knowledge turns out to be wrong or in need of substantial refinement. I am committed to creating a learning community with each class where the students and I learn from one another.

What about your background has led you to teach this class?

GG: My research concerns the processes that generate and maintain biodiversity, specifically of plants and more specifically of ferns and trees. Inevitably, these processes include the effects of size—i.e., size of the organisms themselves (e.g., trees), the numbers of coexisting species (the size of the tree community), and the size of the habitats they inhabit (the size of a forest stand or an island). The effects of size are not merely additive. Size inevitably alters essential aspects of the organism or community, producing novel emergent properties (features that form from the synthesis rather than the sum of their parts) that determine how they interact with their physical environment and others (species or communities). These effects of size (or scale to use the technical lingo) manifest in almost every realm of human inquiry and activity from biology, medicine, cosmology, and engineering to economics, social organization, culture, and the creative arts.

What kinds of activities should the students expect in the class?

GG: Some lecture is inevitable, but always highly interactive and limited. Instead, I emphasize active learning (often through small group activities), flipped-classroom discussions based on assignments (homework), and open-ended inquiry in which student teams deep-dive into course-relevant topics of their choosing.  A small number of mathematical and statistical skills (of high utility) will be taught throughout the semester in the form of assignments and class exercises and applied through student team projects.

How will the class benefit students, in your view?

GG: Students will gain insight into the role of size (magnitude) in a great many aspects of their lives, particularly how rates of change and emergence of novel properties affect complex processes. They will gain facility with a small set of highly useful mathematical skills that empower students to investigate a wide range of phenomena in our natural and social worlds and interpret and vet news regarding these topics. And, I hope, the class will stimulate their curiosity and sense of (intellectual) adventure, as knowledge and skill unlock “new worlds.” 

What are you most looking forward to about the class?

GG: Teaching is particularly fun when student curiosity is stimulated and agency regarding what is learned is maximized. So I look forward most to the student-team investigations.