John Confer Email & Phone Number

Professor, principal investigator, researcher, instructor, research assistant.My basic teaching philosophy is a student-centered and project-driven approach. I challenge students and work with them to help them solve problems or find answers. In all of the classes I teach, I attempt to use examples or case studies to emphasize points and make them more applicable to the students. These include “real world" applied examples and related situations usually drawn from personal experiences and from my research program. I strongly believe in the value of service-learning so in my classes where ever possible I attempt to incorporate opportunities for the students to participate in service-learning projects. I truly believe in the benefits of these service learning projects to the students and benefactors.I am always actively involved in scholarship and in the pursuit of my own learning and try to be enthusiastic, supportive and creative. I am never satisfied with myself and my performance. With my class lectures and discussions, I strive each time to make them better by evaluating myself after each class. I have always wanted to be a teacher and when I think about the people I admire, most of them are teachers.I am very committed to teaching and feel strongly that a professor’s first duty is to the students. Student advising and mentoring are important duties for all professors and I take these responsibilities very seriously. There is no career more rewarding than teaching.I strive to incorporate instructional technologies and various media in all of the courses that I teach. I feel integrating technology in the classroom is critical in preparing students for the more technologically oriented society of yhe future. Technology is merely one of many tools employed in the successful transfer of information, fostering understanding, teaching specific applied skills and abilities, developing analysis and critical thinking skills and creation of knowledge.Specialties: Outdoor recreation planning & management, recreation carrying capacity, recreation ecology, recreation behavior, visitor impact management, nature-based tourism, ecotourism, heritage tourism, benefits of parks, recreation &tourism, health benefits & quality of life aspects, recreation negative impacts, methods to minimize these impacts, recreation geography, use of GIS/GPS to display/analyze the spatial components of recreation including site-specific impacts of recreation activities

Listed skills include Recreation Studies, Recreation Planning, Recreation And Gis, Public Speaking, and 5 others.