CURRICULUM VITAE

Larry J. Grabau

Updated November 12, 2004

Rank: Professor.

2003 DOE: 12% instruction, 88% research. [Note: Administrative status from Jan 1 through August 15, 2003—I’m unclear what that does to my DOE for this merit review.]

2004 DOE: 44% instruction, 56% research.

 

RESEARCH:

Extramural projects:

1. Physiological basis for yield reduction in no-till wheat. Co-PI with S Kumudini. 2003-05. Competitive award from the Kentucky Small Grain Promotion Council. $10,000.

 

Intramural projects:

1. Organic Field Crops Research Initiative. PI. Competitive grant from the New Crop Opportunities Center. 2004-07. $44,045.

2. Establishing the Kentucky Journal for Excellence in College Teaching & Learning. Grant from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, matched by nine public institutions of higher education and the Association of Independent Kentucky Colleges & Universities. 2002-04. $20,000

3. Improving the first year undergraduate experience through a faculty learning community for TA developers. Co-PI with Carolyn Carter. Competitive grant from UK’s allocation of faculty development funds from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. 2002-04. $21,800.

4. Curriculum transformation: Faculty development to enhance student retention. Co-PI with Lauretta Byars and Carolyn Carter. Competitive grant from UK’s allocation of faculty development funds from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. 2002-03. $22,000.

Graduate Student Advising:

Co-advisor, Victoria Bhavsar, Ph.D., 2003. Member of three other Ph.D. committees.

Teaching & Advising:  

           Teaching quality ratings

Course   Semester   % effort   Enrollment   Instructor   Prefix   College

DSP 130   Fall ‘02   100   18   3.9   3.5   3.3

GS 650   Spring ’03   50   36   rating not conducted

DSP 130   Fall ‘03   100   18   3.5   3.5   3.3

NRC 301   Spring ‘04   100   20   3.6   3.4   3.4

DSP 130   Fall ’04   100   21   not yet completed

PLS 366   Fall ’04   100   38   not yet completed

Undergraduate Advising:

 

Semester   Students

Spring ’03   1

Fall ’03   0

Spring ’04   4

Fall ’04   24

 

Mentoring undergraduates: one NRC 395 research project, Fall ’04.

 

Efforts to improve teaching: this is a bit ironic for the former director of the Teaching & Learning Center! But, I’ll swallow hard and just say what I’ve been working on since I got back to the department.

• Built a NRC 301, the introductory course for the Natural Resource Conservation & Management program. Incorporated an overnight field trip to Mammoth Cave region to help students grasp national park, agricultural, and industrial perspectives on conservation and management of that karst region.
• Took over PLS 366, Fundamentals of Soil Science. Instituted Blackboard quizzes on reading material, which students take prior to the lecture and discussion on those topics.
• Enrolled myself in EDP 600, Human Development in order to better understand how undergraduate students grow cognitively over their college years; I’m also interested in what we can do to facilitate that growth.
• Sharpened my DSP 130 offering by raising expectations of the first-year students in this Discovery Program seminar.
• Applied, with Ed Lee of Russian Studies and Todd Pfeiffer of Agronomy, for a new science honors program sequence offering in food, biotechnology, and the environment.

 

PUBLICATIONS:
Refereed journal articles:

1. Thompson, J. A., and L. J. Grabau. 2004. A la carte grading: Providing students opportunities to determine their own path to success. J. Nat. Res. Life Sci. Educ. 33:92-97.

2. Kumudini, S., L. Grabau, T. Pfeiffer and C. Steele. 2005. Management and production potential of value-added soybean cultivars in south central USA. Agron. J. 97: (accepted pending revisions)

Shorter papers (not peer-reviewed) :

1. Grabau, L. J. 2004. Welcome to the Kentucky Journal of Excellence in College Teaching & Learning (KyJECT&L)! Kentucky J. Excell. Coll. Teach. Learning 2:i.

2. Grabau, L. J. 2003. Welcome to the Kentucky Journal of Excellence in College Teaching & Learning (KyJECT&L)! Kentucky J. Excell. Coll. Teach. Learning 1:i-ii.

3. Grabau, L. J. 2003. Readers of the new Kentucky Journal of Excellence in College Teaching & Learning. Kentucky J. Excell. Coll. Teach. Learning 1:iii.

 

Abstracts: I published 5 abstracts, 3 of which I presented.

SERVICE & RECOGNITION:
Administrative Assignments:

• Director, Teaching & Learning Center, Jan ’01 through Aug ‘03
• Director, Graduate Certificate in College Teaching & Learning, ’03-‘04
• Undergraduate Director, Natural Resource Conservation & Management, ’04-??

 

Awards and Honors:

Agronomic Resident Education Award, 2002, American Society of Agronomy.

Master Teacher Award for the College of Agriculture by Gamma Sigma Delta. 1988.

 

Editorships:

Editor, Kentucky Journal of Excellence in College Teaching & Learning, 2002-2004. (Website: http://www.uky.edu/TLC)

Editor, Journal of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Education. 1997-2001. (website: http://www.jnrlse.org)

 

Committees:

Society level:

   Chair, Agronomic Resident Education Award, 2004-05.

University Level:

   Chair, Enrollment Management Committee of Senate Council, 2004-05.

   University Appeals Board, 2004-07.

   University Senate Council. 2004-06.

   University Senate, elected College of Agriculture representative. ‘03-‘06.

   University Senate Admissions Advisory Committee. 2003-06.

   University Strategic Planning Committee, 2002-03.

   University Undergraduate Council representative. 2004-2005.

College Level:

   Chair, Merger Committee, College of Agriculture and School of Human Environmental Sciences, 2003-04.

   Review committee, Department of Agricultural Economics. 2003-04.

   Review committee, Department of Landscape Architecture. 2004-05.

   College Curriculum Review Committee. 1991-97, 2004-06.

Department Level:

   Crop Science Seminar Coordinator, 2003-04.

Narrative Statements:

Research:

Since returning to the Department in August 2003, I have initiated two research projects. One focuses on the finding physiological explanations for the tendency for no-till wheat to produce lower yields than conventionally tilled wheat. That project is collaborative with Saratha Kumudini. We obtained extramural funding in both 2003-04 and 2004-05 ($5000 each season) in support of this project from the Kentucky Small Grain Promotion Board. Already, we are finding interesting results, and anticipate that this project will be only the beginning of a series of related projects to be published within the near future.

   My second project is just now getting under way. Under the New Crop Opportunities center, I’ll be working on establishing paired research sites for the development of organic grain cropping systems. Hairy vetch, orchard grass, rye, and wheat have been planted for the first set of plots on Maine Chance farm, and alfalfa has been seeded in a field on the Princeton station in anticipation of a Fall 2005 start to a similar project in West Kentucky. The goal of this initial project is to build a framework for more detailed studies into specific aspects of each of the three major cropping systems we are establishing (3 grain crops in two years; 2 grain crops in two years; and 1 grain crop in two years). We anticipate that this project will allow us to secure extramural funding in collaboration with other UK researchers.

   Finally, John Grove, Ole Wendroth, and I will be co-advising a new Venezuelan student (Maiby Perez) started in January, 2005. She will be working on the characterization and alleviation of row-crop stress due to excessive soil compaction. I anticipate establishing other similar projects in collaboration with my new soil science colleagues over the next biennium.

 

Teaching:

   Actually, this is all about student learning. If my students aren’t learning, then no matter how clever my teaching is, I have accomplished very little. I will briefly describe what I’m doing to help students learn in the three primary classes I now facilitate:

 

• DSP 130, Plants, Pigs, & People: Shuffling the Gene Deck
• NRC 301, Natural Resource Conservation & Management
• PLS 366, Fundamentals of Soil Science

 

DSP 130 is an inquiry-based course. My role is to facilitate student learning by providing a rich instructional context with a clear, coherent course structure; challenging field trip speakers; and demanding team reports on each of the three course units. At the start of each of the three course units, we go through some of the available materials and issues. Typically, I lead this discussion in a very interactive way. Then students are randomly split into teams of 4-5 for the remainder of that unit. They work together to establish a research topic, do the research, and develop and present their work in the media I’ve chosen ( PowerPoint for one unit, posters for another, drama/debate/whatever creative for the third). This has easily been the most exciting course I’ve worked with at UK, primarily because my job is to facilitate their learning, rather than telling them all the things they need to know.

I had previously served as Undergraduate Director in the NRCM program, but had never taught a course for those students. So, when the chance came up to take over the introductory course (NRC 301) for that program, I seized it. Four approaches that I took seemed to work very well with this first group of students: 1) demanding team quizzes, 2) regular individual news-stories, 3) professional guest speakers, and 4) the overnight field trip to the Mammoth Cave region. The quizzes were taken in class and covered the previous two class sessions, along with the related readings. Teams of three students took the quizzes (short answer and multiple choice) together, often arguing about what answers to select, and sometimes agreeing to disagree on how to answer specific items. These group quizzes were intended to help students learn, as well as to foster the development of much-prized, but hard-won teamwork skills. On six different occasions during the semester, students had to find a published citation on an environmental issue, and write a 250 word analysis of its message. I was delighted when many of them volunteered to share what they had learned from this work at the following class session. Guest speakers gave a richness to the course, especially helping students to see the wide array of potential positions available after completion of the NRCM degree. I have described the Mammoth Cave region trip above; every student who was able to attend was enthusiastic about what they had learned from this field-oriented project.

In my newest assignment, I’m working on surviving the semester in PLS 366—adapting each set of lecture notes and laboratory provided by my predecessor to my own learning objectives for these diverse students. Before checking out any of those materials, I went through the text for the course, and wrote out 4-7 learning objectives for each lecture session. As the semester has progressed, I am adapting the notes to closely correspond to these carefully crafted learning objectives. I’ve also implemented a new strategy (borrowed from Todd Pfeiffer) to try to get students to read the text prior to our class discussion of a given topic. Using an available feature on the Blackboard course management system, I put up a 10 item multiple choice quiz on Wednesday evenings to be taken before the Monday morning lecture. After 7 such quizzes, I asked students to anonymously evaluate the value of this approach. Amazingly, 28/30 respondents found the quizzes to be valuable or highly valuable! Further, a half dozen students suggested that we ought to have a quiz before each and every lecture! They freely acknowledged that they read the text before lectures with quizzes, but not before lectures without quizzes. Next semester, I plan to give a Blackboard quiz which closes on Tuesday morning before our meeting; however, the quiz will cover the reading not only for that Tuesday morning, but also for the following Thursday morning. Another adaptation I plan for next semester is to modify four of the 11 laboratory exercises to better match the needs of Landscape Architecture students in one of the four laboratory sections. That will be much more challenging for me, but should greatly increase the relevance of those four topics for the LA students, and that should enhance their learning—which is, after all, the goal of the entire exercise.