Douglas R. Toomey
Department of Geological Sciences
University of Oregon

Dear Doug,

I am writing to offer my enthusiastic support for the proposal you are
preparing in response to the Request for Proposals that was recently issued
by Greg Bothun and Desh. I have long been aware of your desire to better
integrate your research into your teaching, and of your frustration
resulting from inadequate support (e.g., programmers, release time etc.)
for such an effort. This rfp appears designed to address exactly this need
and it couldn't have come along at a better time.

I have read the draft of the proposal you plan to submit and I find it to
be compelling, innovative and padagogically exciting. I think it is an
excellent idea to launch this new effort in the laboratory portion of your
introductory geology class for majors (GEOL 201). This class seems to me to
be of an ideal size (~50 students) for an experiment like you propose and
the students it attracts are generally quite motivated and thus, I expect
that they will respond positively to the WEB-based interface and software
tools that you propose to develop. And, I expect that this same interface
and these same tools will be directly transferrable to similar efforts
involving other classes. As we have discussed, expanding this effort into
our large enrollment Volcanoes and Earthquakes class seems a natural, and
numerous other classes that could adopt this approach in teaching readily
come to mind. In addition, this initial effort has the potential to lead to
substantial outside funding to expand and diversify the array of software
tools that can be used to good advantage in integrating research data sets
into "classroom" teaching .

My understanding is that you intend to use the funding this program might
provide to hire a programmer to work with you to implement the ideas you
have presented in the proposal but that your expected teaching assignment
during the coming academic year will be unchanged. I am pleased that you
are eager to get involved in this innovative new way to look at teaching
and I expect the we will benefit as a department from the visibility that
your efforts are sure to provide.

Best Wishes and Good Luck!

Dana

A. Dana Johnston, Head

Department of Geological Sciences
A. Dana Johnston
Department of Geological Sciences
1272 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403
Tel: 541-346-5588
FAX: 541-346-4692
email: adjohn@oregon.uoregon.edu