Welcome and thanks for taking the time to visit and explore this site that I am using to share parts of my scholarly life and world with others. Like other virtual content on the internet, I trust you will understand that this site is but a placeholder for how I wish to see myself and project it, if only partially, into the world. For those who know me, I trust that you will see something of me in this place.
I also like words and playing with language. And, so, this site, as a place to “try” things out, in addition to simply sharing more mundane things about me and my life-work, is well in line with the notion of composing…creating…trying…inventing…an essay or essai (from the French, essayer, to try).
Naturally, there is far more to me than all of this academic “stuff,” but, as an extreme introvert, this is where I’m generally comfortable — in my own little world of ideas and thought. Still, I was born in Nova Scotia, the eldest of four and the first in my immediate family to go to university. For much of my life I had no real idea what I should do or what I should be when I got older. I suppose I could say I’m still waiting for that moment to happen. My family genealogy is a bit of an oddity to me, but I suppose it is fair to say that my family roots take me back to various places across Europe, particularly Britain and Western Europe. And, naturally, this also makes me a settler on Turtle Island. Relatedly, I currently live on the original territories of the Three Fires Confederacy of First Nations, comprised of the Ojibwa, the Odawa, and the Potawatomi and I pay my respects to the original ancestors of this place and reaffirm our relationship with one another. To say that I have so much to learn beyond mere offering respect to those who have walked here before me or call this home is an understatement.
You’d be correct if you thought I was an academic. In fact, I’m a Professor at the University of Windsor in the Faculty of Education. That said, it is hard for me to describe me quite so succinctly…or simply. Formally, my various academic degrees speak to different aspects of mathematics, although, for the most part, my scholarly interests and teaching experiences skirt well beyond any superficial boundaries of mathematics. As such, I am drawn to the arts, aesthetics, linguistics, music, instructional design, statistics pedagogy, curriculum theory, food and cooking, and reading. I tend to think about and view these things through the lens of complexity theory, networks, and ecological sensibilities. I often seem to come back to these themes, ideas, and related concepts.
I live here, in the southwest corner of Ontario, where summers are dreadfully hot and humid and winters are tolerably cold. My husband and I are entertained (more than enough) by our three cats, two of which are Siamese brothers. I live a quiet life, although having chronic tinnitus renders that peaceful sort of country living, in a town that reminds me of where I grew up in the Maritimes, into something a little more cacophonous.