Oak Forest HS Students Inspired by Professors

Oak Forest High School AP Geography students were inspired recently by two Geography professors that came to speak to them about careers in Geography. These students were a part of OFHS teacher Ed Lipowski’s class.

Dr. Rex Rowley and Dr. Jonathan Thayn, both Geography professors at Illinois State University, talked about the research they have worked with and how teaching and learning about geography has changed their lives.

It turns out that a geographer’s life is really very exciting! Both professors have traveled extensively in order to follow their research pursuits. Dr. Rowley regularly travels to Japan and to New Mexico as a part of his curriculum at ISU and Dr. Thayn travels to North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Each professor had a different specialty. Dr. Rowley researches about how people relate to and interact with places. He takes a group to New Mexico every year and also a group to Japan for a short term class.

Dr. Thayn researches green-related items and focuses on understanding landscape scale ecosystems, their seasonal variations, and their response to perturbation.

OFHS Geography students got a first hand dose of some of what these gentlemen work with in their classes because they enjoyed a geocaching activity during the lecture. Students worked with the GPS and located items which Dr. Rowley had hidden around the property of OFHS. Dr. Rowley said as he instructed them, “If we have time we can calculate the distance. We can calculate exactly where we are using distance=r x time.”

Dr. Rowley explained that geocaching is similar to treasure hunting in that there is something at the end of the GPS that students can find.

While Dr. Rowley and some of the students were geocaching, Dr. Thayn was explaining some of the more “green” elements of his work. Every year, he takes students to measure and map how deforestation was affecting gypsy moth populations in the Apostle Islands in Wisconsin. Other projects he has worked on is to measure where the most occurrences of cancer happen in the United States. According to Dr. Thayn, it is in the southern states and in Illinois.

The OFHS AP Geography students enjoyed the talk and learning about what a geographer actually does.