A bit about me

This is a totally optional read! But I'm curious about all of you, and students often like to know a bit about that person at the front of the room (or this semester, behind the screen!), so here's a little bit about me and my background.

Not a born Yukoner. I was born in Cambridge England while my father was going to University there, but I have no memories of it because we moved to southern Ontario when I was 2. I lived in Ontario until I finished my Bachelor's degree from the University of Waterloo in Systems Design Engineering in 1981 and came to the Yukon. "Just for the Summer" 😉 #oldeststoryinthebook.

I did actually leave after working at Whitehorse Copper Mine for the summer to do a Masters degree (also in SDE at UW, Thesis topic: A piano monitoring system — a hardware system that recorded the motion of all the keys on a grand piano during performance for study by kinesiologists and musicologists).

I came back to the Yukon after that and worked at YG as a statistical analyst, and then at Yukon College when it was down by the river. I taught the Computer Management program, and discovered that I was supposed to be a teacher not an engineer! #foreheadslap

I did leave one more time to get a PhD (Thesis Topic: Selective attention in human and machine vision), but I returned in 1990 and have lived here since. Bought land (you'd cry if I told you how cheap it was), built a house (that took a while! 😅), had two children, and taught at Yukon College and now Yukon University. I've taught Math (Calculus, Finite Mathematics, and Statistics), Physics, Computer Science, and even one Sociology course (Society, Technology and Values), so I did put my engineering training to good use.

I retired from teaching full-time in 2015, but when teaching's what you're supposed to do...you can't just stop.

I do now spend a couple of months each year in "northern" ontario near Pointe au Baril in a little cabin on an island.

Other current projects include firesmarting our lot, renovating our house (we didn't really notice it aging for a couple of decades, but it did 😆), and building a very small motor canoe.