university life

My new life at the University of New Mexico includes teaching in and overseeing an interdisciplinary graduate program for water resources students (Not too early to apply for next fall!). But what does this word “interdisciplinary” mean?

My day thus far:

• morning phone call with law school faculty member about arcane structure of New Mexico’s Central Arizona Project water allocation (yes, we have one)
• lunch with geographer, economist, and sociologist about project studying resilience in headwaters communities across the Americas
• Friday afternoon engineering seminar on hydroponics to grow food
• serendipitous stop in engineering lab to see bench scale work using reverse osmosis membranes to remove organic contaminants from wastewater
• happy accident in biology talking to a researcher who studies microbial systems in caves, and also works on science communication

I love my new job.