Christopher X J. Jensen
Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

STEAMplant project brings local primary school kids to Pratt’s Textile Dye Garden

Posted 30 Nov 2022 / 0

I am excited about having participated in a wonderful STEAMplant project headed up by Art and Design Education graduate student Ana Codorean. The project focused on how to get local public school students thinking about interdependence and the ways in which natural dyes can be used in creative work. Encompassing an impressive breadth of scientific Read More

A Major Post, Art & Design, Coevolution, Community Ecology, Competition, Department of Mathematics & Science, Ecology, Ecology Education, Fashion, Green Design, Interactions, Mutualism, Pollination, Pratt Institute, Public Outreach, Reciprocity, Science in Art & Design, STEAMplant, Sustainability, Teaching

How will the COVID-19 crisis affect action on climate change?

Posted 12 Apr 2020 / 0

The New York Times “What the Coronavirus Means for Climate Change“ This is a great overview of the promise and perils associated with post-coronavirus climate action. For me, the greatest potential for turning this terrible global health crisis into a catalyst for global climate action is to tie economic recovery efforts to sustainability. The “Green Read More

A Minor Post, Articles, Climate Change, Public Policy

Core of Me short video

Posted 09 Apr 2020 / 0

I was fortunate to be a collaborator on a STEAMplant team that included Sirovich Family Resident Jeremy Pickard (@jeremy_pickard) and my Pratt colleague, anthropologist Jennifer Telesca. Jeremy’s STEAMplant project focused on the creation of a short “hike-play” which required the audience to take a walk in the woods before seeing the actual performance. This short video, created Read More

A Minor Post, Art & Design, Climate Change, Ecology, Public Art, STEAMplant, Temperate Forest

The first product of a three-year-long Faculty Learning Community project

Posted 06 Dec 2019 / 0

I am so proud to announce the publication of “The Art of Designing a Curriculum Optimized for Learning Transfer” in Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning. This is the first article published by Pratt’s interdisciplinary Transfer of Learning Faculty Learning Community (aka the “Transfer FLC”). I got to spend the last three years working with Read More

A Major Post, Center for Teaching & Learning, Interdisciplinarity, Pratt Institute, Research Projects, Teaching

Alexandra Walling illuminates the mutual aid between evolutionary biologists and Jeffrey Epstein

Posted 27 Sep 2019 / 0

The Outline “Why Jeffrey Epstein loved evolutionary psychology and why evolutionary psychologists loved him right back” This is a really great article that highlights how powerful evolutionary biologists align themselves with wealthy capitalists. In the case of Jeffrey Epstein, their interpretations of Darwinian theory provided intellectual cover for abusive behavior.

A Minor Post, Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Evolution

I will be a 2019-2020 Center for Teaching & Learning Fellow

Posted 19 Jun 2019 / 0

I am proud to have been named one of five inaugural Center for Teaching and Learning Fellows at Pratt Institute. I join Film and Video Professor Kara Hearn, Architecture Professor Jonathan Scelsa, Communications Design Professor Nida Abdullah, and Industrial Design Professor Matthew Hoey in the first cohort of Fellows working on pedagogical research projects supported by Read More

A Major Post, Center for Teaching & Learning, CTL Fellows Project, General Education, Higher Education, Pratt Institute, Teaching

An analysis of my course evaluations (Spring 2019)

Posted 18 Jun 2019 / 2

It has been awhile since I took the time to chronicle my analysis of my course evaluations. I always take a very deep look at my evaluations, and have been updating my overall history of course evaluations on a regular basis. But actually sitting down to write about my analysis — and sharing what I Read More

A Major Post, Assessment Methods, Course Evaluations, Higher Education, MSWI-260C, Evolution, MSWI-270C, Ecology, Environment, & the Anthropocene, Teaching

How does this professor really spend his work time? (Spring 2019)

Posted 29 May 2019 / 0

Last semester I got serious about my time budget. Although I had been tracking my time for years to assure that I was “working enough”, I had spent too many of those years “just doing what seemed like it needed to be done”, a practice that had led me to pay some serious opportunity costs: Read More

A Major Post, Higher Education, Research Projects, Teaching

Predicting Future Evolution (Spring 2019)

Posted 10 May 2019 / 0

One of the activities that I regularly have my students complete in my Evolution course is called “Future Evolution“. The activity sends students on what most evolutionary biologists consider a fool’s errand: to try to predict the future evolution of some particular trait in some particular species. Making such predictions is really difficult for these basic reasons: Read More

A Major Post, Adaptation, Anthropogenic Change, Coevolution, Evolution, Evolution Education, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Evolution, Lesson Ideas, MSWI-260C, Evolution, Prediction

I will be participating in the 2019 NCEP Teaching & Learning Studio

Posted 05 May 2019 / 0

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons I am very excited to be a participant in the American Museum of Natural History‘s Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners (NCEP) program’s 2019 Teaching and Learning Studio. This year’s theme is “Effective Teaching by Design”, which describes a lot of the scholarship that I have been doing over the years and Read More

A Minor Post, Conservation Biology, Ecology Education, Education, Evolution Education, Higher Education, Museum design, Museums & Zoos