Teaching Experience
I am passionate about bringing active, project- and community-based learning experiences to students in the classroom and supporting student-centered learning in a safe, supportive environment for all students.
At UIS, I primarily teach classes that focus on water resources, physical environmental sciences, and environmental methods. These include:
Prior to joining UIS, my postsecondary teaching experience and development included:
Prior to returning to graduate school, I was an instructor and tutor for a local company in Denver, Colorado. I taught ACT and SAT test prep courses, tutored students individually in math and science content, and developed and edited both student and teacher manuals for test prep.
I have also published research on education in postsecondary environments.
I am passionate about bringing active, project- and community-based learning experiences to students in the classroom and supporting student-centered learning in a safe, supportive environment for all students.
At UIS, I primarily teach classes that focus on water resources, physical environmental sciences, and environmental methods. These include:
- ENS 251 Introduction to Environmental Sciences (Spring 2024)
- ENS 404 Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems (Spring 2023, Summer 2023)
- ENS 465 Water Resources and Society (in development)
- ENS 466/467 Ecohydrology and Ecohydrology Lab (Fall 2022, Fall 2023)
- ENS 551 Environmental Natural Sciences (Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Spring 2024)
- ENS 543 Environmental Data Analysis with R (Fall 2022, Spring 2024)
Prior to joining UIS, my postsecondary teaching experience and development included:
- Instructor for Science Writing (SOE 592) at Washington State University (Spring 2022)
- T.A. for Global Studies: Environment (HASS 200) at Colorado School of Mines (Fall 2018)
- T.A. for Hydrology and Water Resources Laboratory (CEEN 482) at Colorado School of Mines (Fall 2017)
- I have also participated in the training and obtained a certification from the Inclusive STEM Teaching Project.
- In the Fall of 2017, I took a graduate-level pedagogy class, Fundamentals of College Teaching, to improve my understanding of learning in STEM classrooms. This course was taught by leaders in Mines' Trefney Center.
Prior to returning to graduate school, I was an instructor and tutor for a local company in Denver, Colorado. I taught ACT and SAT test prep courses, tutored students individually in math and science content, and developed and edited both student and teacher manuals for test prep.
I have also published research on education in postsecondary environments.
- Blount, K. and A. Kroepsch (2019). Improving the Resilience of Water Resources after Wildfire through Collaborative Watershed Management: A Case Study from Colorado. Case Studies in the Environment. doi: 10.1525/cse.2019.sc.960306.
- Examines collaborative governance and watershed management after wildfire in a pedagogy case study format. The publication includes the case article, teaching notes, and a slide deck.
- Blount, K., G. Pignotti, and J. Wolfand. ET Cool Home: Innovative Educational Activities on Evapotranspiration and Urban Heat. In review, 2023, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. https://hess.copernicus.org/preprints/hess-2023-296/.
- Details the development of an undergraduate laboratory activities in which students set up an experiment with different land covers and calculate evapotranspiration using both energy and water balance approaches to examine interactions between urban heat and land cover.