Meet Our Professors

Scott McCahon

Scott McCahon, an educator for 34 years and a Social Studies teacher at Forest Grove High School for the past 12 years is the first teacher in Oregon to teach the Pacific Geospatial Semester course in the past academic year. He will share his experience in successfully teaching ArcGIS software to students and using it to create a map connected to a database to address a local problem.

Dr. Rich Van Buskirk

Dr. Buskirk, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Pacific University, is a broadly trained evolutionary ecologist with a passion for questions having conservation applications.  His research interests range from the assembly of functional grassland and riparian communities to the response of organisms to environmental change. Historical biogeography and phylogeography set the context for these questions while field-based assessments of habitat requirements and animal movement are used to determine the shortcomings of current management practices.  He’s fascinated by advances in molecular biology and remote sensing that allow previously untenable questions pertaining to distribution and abundance to be pursued at the landscape scale.  To this end he’s applied techniques in genetic analysis and remote sensing to understand how evolutionary history and patterns of movement influence current population dynamics.

Dr. Mike Charles

Dr. Mike Charles, Professor of Education at Pacific University, is an educational media and technology specialist with a background in curriculum and instruction. He taught in grades K-6 for 15 years in Phoenix, Arizona, working as a K-6 computer resource teacher for the final six years. His research interests include the way that technology enables student-initiated project learning environments, uses of visualization tools in teaching mathematics and science in K-12 education, and the complexities involved in changing teacher practice.

Register for the workshop here