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Monday Memos 8/26/19

Welcome to the first Monday Memo of the 2019/2020 school year.  I will be updating this area of my profile with announcement so that you're able to find information I send you easily!

 

Walk-In Hours 

This week, August 26 - August 30, I will be seeing students as Walk - Ins.  Please come to POT 202 to check in.

 

First Year Meetings

If you are new to UK, please set up a meeting during the month of September with me via your myUK page.  

To make an appointment, please use these instructions:

Discovering My Place

The University of Kentucky is bigger than I understood before I sat wedged in with thousands of my fellow newly inducted freshman (or super junior in my case) and recognized this huge crowd was maybe a quarter of the undergraduate class on campus.  I added the graduate and professional populations and that was when I began to consider UK its own "Learning Town" in the middle of Lexington.

At this point, halfway through what I imagine will be four undergraduate semesters on campus, there is a lot of work but I am engaged with the material and enthusiastic to progress.  I intend to add some of the works I am creating for my classes here.  I intend to build a student portfolio with this bog.  I have some completed work I intend to post here, but I want to see what grade I get before I do.  I suppose I might try to document my overall UK experience in posts like this as well.  Or this might be the only post like this.  Time will tell.

Computer Help

Hello,

So I am experiencing a computer issue. This is the same issue I've submitted a few times over the past few years:

1. Computer, when working, never had a login for the set user account.

2. Randomly, the user account, which is set and without password, requires a password reset since the password expired.

3. Since there is no password set, there is no way to reset password and requires administrator priveleges to fix.

Can someone please come and unlock the computer. The computer is located in BBSRB B403.

Thanks,

Jonathan

AXIOMS OF GEOMORPHOLOGY

Axiomatic approaches to science and mathematics depend on an underlying set of statements, principles, or propositions that apply to all situations within the domain of study. The axioms run the gamut from undisputed universal laws to widely or even universally accepted but unproved or unprovable generalizations, to propositional stipulations adopted for analytical convenience or because they raise interesting questions.

Examples abound in mathematics and formal logic, and in science, engineering and technological applications of math and logic. Although it is only occasionally referred to as such, the laws of stratigraphy (details in any geology textbook) form an axiomatic approach to sedimentology, sedimentary geology, and related palaeoenvironmental studies. The laws of original horizontality, lateral continuity, superposition, and cross-cutting relationships are assumed in this approach to apply to all sedimentary deposits, and therefore form an axiomatic system for interpretation.

Opinions on General Education

General education is important because it is the basis for specialized knowledge. The problem is that specialized education many times does not rely upon general education. For example, take my major of Political Science. It requires a general education in composition, history, and humanities among other broad study fields, but in order to be knowledgeable in my specialized education, I do not require more quantitative fields. A STEM student may require more technical classes as his or her basis of study, but he or she does not need humanities to excel. Ultimately, this shows the downfall of the UK Core. While Composition might be a good fit for all students, humanities or quantitative reasoning are not. It wastes not only a student's limited time at the institution, but it also wastes the individual's money on superfluous classes which do not help the student. A way to aid this may be to provide a broader definition to what is a quantitative class. Political science majors would benefit from statistics as a Mathematics requirement; whereas, STEM students would benefit if Science/Technology/Engineering/Mathematics History met the requirements. UK Core may parallel with issues in Common Core or No Child Left Behind due to its cookie cutter image of all students.