Social Sciences with Pedro D.

How did producing plutonium for nuclear weapons in the 40's make the future of a huge chunk of land in Eastern Washington State a political, technical, cultural, and scientific problem for generations to come--potentially even longer than human beings have existed? This is the question I spent years researching, and on which I wrote my dissertation. As you can see, I am interested in how people, politics, and technologies relate in VERY messy ways to places and environments. I am also interested in the ways societies have created problems that hard to even wrap your head around, let along "solve" (or, in this case, "cleanup"). I want to help you get as excited about the questions raised by anthropology, sociology, geography, history, and other social sciences/social studies as I am. I want to help make sure it doesn't seem like a pointless task, like just memorizing dates or the names of capital cities. I want to help you put what you need to learn in the context of big questions, interesting stories, and the problems and issues you see in your own experiences. I have taught students at the college level, and have worked on after school educational programs for high school students. I've also been involved in popular education efforts, and training for student activists. Most recently, I taught college seniors writing their theses, which had to be 60-100 page original research projects, so I'd also love to help you with writing papers of any kind!