My name is Paula and I have taught at the college for 34 years. I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota where I earned a Bachelor's degrees in English and German from the University of Minnesota. After graduating, I moved to Maryland, having gotten a position at the National Security Agency. After leaving the agency, I taught English as a Second Language in Washington D.C. In 1974, I enrolled in a graduate program in education at the University of Maryland. My areas of specialization were geology and astronomy. My favorite topic in astronomy is planetary geology, a subject which combines both of my interests, and cosmology (the origins of the universe).
My interest in technology has led me to explore the use of technology in education. I have taken a courses in UNIX and C programming language and have taught myself Perl, JAVASCRIPT and some XML. Interested in the application of technology to learning, I developed the first online course on my campus. I was also the WebCT administrator for several years. Currently I support the distance learning program in a multitude of capacities, while still teaching online.
What do I do in my free time? I love to travel. I have camped in cow pastures, in "haunted" castles in Ireland and at the foot of volcanoes in Iceland. I even climbed the Jungfrau glacier in the Swiss Alps barefoot!!! The climb was the result of poor planning, not design ;-) Other trips have taken me to an island in a Norwegian fjord, the coast of Spain and the Incan ruins at Cuzco and Machu Picchu in Peru. Two summers ago I spent some time in France, Spain and Germany. In Spain I visited the Alhambra, a magnificent site. Last summer, I spent a week in Sicily. This summer??? What about Mallorca??
My love for glaciers and glacial processes has taken me to Norway, Iceland, a smoking Mount St Helens and Alaska. The highlight of my Alaska trip was flying over and landing on the Ruth Glacier at the foot of Mount Whitney. What's next??? Who knows? I would really love to visit Antarctica.
Being a frustrated photojournalist, I try to document my trips with tons of photographs. Many of my slides have made their way into my on-line courses.