The following is an email which Greg Mohr (BA 1976) sent to the editor on April 8, 2015:
I taught Environmental Studies 165B again last quarter with a record number of students (37, compared to the usual 20 ±5), and it was a real challenge. My teaching “guest” David Stone and I offer it as a practicum follow-on to his 165A lecture class, with seven written assignments that come together at the end as a Final Environmental Impact Report. Our hypothetical “project” is a three-story mixed use building on Campus [Goleta] Point, with 23 faculty townhouses and about 9500 sq. ft. of classroom-lab space, with a main access road that extends Lagoon Rd. past the Marine Science Institute, along the lagoon’s south shore, and then makes a hairpin turn to the east and up onto the point. It’s fun–lots of issues! However, with 37 kids, that kept us humpin’ big time.
Reading the alumni news in the latest Geography Newsletter reminded me that I’ve had a couple of notables over the past two years. I was given the ES Program’s annual Outstanding Alumnus Award in June 2013, and last year I had a presentation accepted for the annual Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS) Conference at Pace University, New York City, in June 2014. However, I got very ill the day before my flight and missed the conference; am on deck to present it at the AESS Conference this June at UC San Diego, should an opening arise that needs filling. I’m still the AESS’s founding Treasurer, through at least June 2017 when my current term’s up. That’s something that also keeps me humping from time to time, like now, leading up to the conference–many bills to pay, with not much money to pay ’em. To top things off, I’m the Secretary for the Retired Employees of Santa Barbara County, a non-profit 501(c)(7) social benefit corporation, but plan to leave that at the end of this year. I’ve been doing it since Jan. 2009, and it’s time to let it go.
It was good to see some familiar old names on the Spring Newsletter’s donor’s list: Jim Frew, Earl Hajic, Doug Stow, and Tara Torburn [I knew her as both Hardoin and Twitchell]. What are Doug and Tara up to? I know that Jim’s with Bren, and last saw Earl roller-blading around the SB harbor with much elan, and a broom in hand to clean up after the tourists and other slobs. Enough bragging; property taxes are due in two days, the income tax forms need to be completed by the 15th, and I have a conference call about the AESS’s finances at two this afternoon. Make it stop! Best wishes to all, -Greg Mohr
