Natural History of Addison County In this course, we will forge a sense of place through attention and connection— learning to see the relationships within the region's ecological communities and cultivating relationships within its human communities. To this end, students will engage in a series of field trips in Middlebury and surrounding parts of Addison County. We will use Natural History as a structuring principle, building an understanding of the ways that current landscapes are shaped by influences from bedrock geology to human history to plant and animal assemblages. Our goal over the course of the semester is to help each other find our own places within the wider community, and by so doing, to help make Middlebury feel more like home. Be ready to venture outside. [One 50-min lec. + one

Environmental Change in Latin America This course examines Latin America from a geographical perspective with emphasis on the social, political and ecological underpinnings of change in the region. Building upon the theme of global environmental change in the context of human-environment geography, we will explore urgent challenges linked to the agricultural and extractive industries, urban expansion, land grabs, land reform, indigenous rights, and rural and urban poverty.

Land and Livelihoods - From Local to Global How do flows of money, people, materials, and ideas connect local livelihoods to distant sites and global processes? How do geographers study patterns of poverty and inequality at different scales?  How do we define human development and wellbeing, how do we determine who participates, and why does it matter?  In this course we will draw from perspectives in fields ranging from development geography and political ecology to post-colonial studies to examine livelihood dynamics in the Global South. We will use texts, interviews, writing assignments, problem sets, and mapping exercises to explore relationships between economy, identity, and place in an increasingly connected world.

Data Science Across Disciplines In this course, we will gain exposure to the entire data science pipeline—obtaining and cleaning large and messy data sets, exploring these data and creating engaging visualizations, and communicating insights from the data in a meaningful manner. During morning sessions, we will learn the tools and techniques required to explore new and exciting data sets. During afternoon sessions, students will work in small groups with one of several faculty members on domain-specific research projects in Geography, Linguistics, Political Science, or Writing & Rhetoric. This course will use the R programming language. No prior experience with R is necessary.   GEOG: Students will apply data science tools to explore the geography human-environment relationships around protected areas. We will use household survey and land cover data from locations across the humid tropics where the Wildlife Conservation Society has been tracking human wellbeing and forest resource use in high-priority conservation landscapes. Projects and visualizations will be presented back to WCS to inform their ongoing monitoring and management in these sites.   LNGT: In this section, we will learn how to collect and analyze Twitter data in R. We will focus on social metrics and geographical locations to examine language variation in online communities across the United States. While the emphasis will be placed on linguistics, the statistical and analytical tools will help you work with other types of Twitter corpora in the future.   PSCI: Students will use cross-national data to explore relationships between conflict events and political, social, and economic factors in each nation. What factors contribute to conflict and violence? Our focus will be to find patterns in the data using the tools in R and discuss what those patterns suggest for addressing rising conflict and resolving ones that have already experienced violence.   WRPR: Students will learn to conduct writing studies research through working with "big data” from a multiyear survey of first-year college students about their academic confidences, attitudes, and perceptions. We will explore how educational access, identity, and language background impacts survey responses. Using statistical analysis and data visualizations, as well as writing, we will report our findings.

Research Craft in Human Geography Whether you are planning to do your own research or want to be a more savvy consumer of research produced by others, it is useful to develop an understanding of the process of creating, discovering, and interpreting information about the world. In this course, students will explore quantitative and qualitative methodologies and the ways they can be used in human geography research. Through examples, exercises, and readings, students will learn the types of questions different techniques are designed to answer, how they work, and how to interpret the results. Students will gain hands on experience conducting surveys, generating and interpreting qualitative data, selecting and implementing statistical analyses, and writing research reports, to build competence and critical awareness in the practice and communication of research.

Practicing Human Geography Whether you are planning to do your own research or want to be a more savvy consumer of research produced by others, it is useful to develop an understanding of the process of creating, discovering, and interpreting information about the world. In this course, students will explore quantitative and qualitative methodologies and the ways they can be used in human geography research. Through examples, exercises, and readings, students will learn the types of questions different techniques are designed to answer, how they work, and how to interpret the results. Students will gain hands on experience conducting surveys, generating and interpreting qualitative data, selecting and implementing statistical analyses, and writing research reports, to build competence and critical awareness in the practice and communication of research.

Seminar in Human-Environment Geography: Landscapes in Transition  What will Vermont look like in 100 years? What about the Brazilian Amazon, the Albertine Rift, or your home town? In this seminar, we will explore the ways that processes of change discussed in our thematic Geography classes like urbanization, climate change, gentrification, commoditization, 'globalization', and more may interact and play out in the future. We will discuss studies of historic and ongoing landscape transitions and conduct our own studies of student-selected places, focusing both on the changes most likely to occur given existing trajectories, and attempting to imagine and articulate what changes would be desirable.

Jessica L'Roe

Reviews and ratings for Jessica L'Roe at Middlebury College.Jessica L'Roe teaches Nat History of Addison County, Environ Change Latin America, Land and Livelihoods and more.  Explore top rated instructors and find the best for you.Is Jessica L'Roe good ? Find out on MiddCourses.

This was the first programming course I took at Midd, and I thhought it was super useful. Being a J term class it is pretty fast paced but professors and TAs were super accessible. Useful if you are in any STEM class that deals with large datasets and/or data visualization. 

Generally easy grading with fun, interesting projects. A good amount of reading, but much of the reading is easily digestible and clear—not overly dense, complex, academic pieces. There is a major presentation project that counts as about 30% of your course grade. 

I enjoyed this course, and it did not have a heavy workload! There are constant weekly readings but they aren't difficult and the lectures further clarify or build on top of what was read. There are  also very few assignments which make up the bulk of your grade but you are given a lengthy amount of time to work on them. I would take this course again for a chill class. 