Teacher Education: Faculty

Jason Dahl, Earth Science Instructor, NWOK

Phone Extension: 2182
Email: jdahl@tm.edu
Office: Room 219
Office Hours: 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday

Jason Dahl is originally from northwestern Minnesota. After graduating from Tri-County High School (Karlstad, MN) in 1990, he enrolled at Bemidji State University with the intent of becoming a mechanical engineer, until a summer internship with the Lunar and Planetary Institute and NASA Johnson Space Center lured him into the field of planetary science. He graduated from BSU in 1996 with majors in Physics and Geology and went on to graduate school at Brown University in Providence, RI where he earned a Master’s Degree in planetary geology and specialized in impact cratering. He also developed an interest and expertise in environmental geology and remote sensing.

In the winter of 2002, Jason returned to Bemidji State and joined the faculty in the Center for Environmental, Earth and Space Studies. Over the next seven and a half years, he taught a wide variety of course in geology, environmental science, integrative science for teachers, and the honors program. He served as Director of BSU’s NASA Space Grant program, an affiliate within the Minnesota Space Grant Consortium, and sat as a member of the Honors Council. In the winter of 2005 he was invited to provide a short presentation for the TRIBES (Teaching Relevant Inquiry-Based Environmental Science) program –and consequently spent the next several summers honing his own teaching skills by helping train in-service K-12 teachers from schools with large numbers of indigenous students to improve student engagement by integrating inquiry-based learning with traditional cultural knowledge.

After a budget shortfall lead to the elimination of his position at Bemidji, Jason joined the Teacher Education Department at Turtle Mountain Community College where he teaches Earth Science as part of Native Ways of Knowing. He is also working to (finally) complete his doctoral dissertation which describes the effects of impact angle on impact crater formation, and expects to defend is dissertation in the fall of 2010.