On the 9/10/25 edition of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

Dr.Andy is joined by two Ph.Ds who are speaking at the upcoming 2025 Summer Institute on Teaching and Technology. SITT 2025 features UC Davis faculty during two-half days of online presentations on the mornings of September 11th and 12th. The first guest on the program, Tricia Bertram Gallant, will be giving the lead-off talk at SITT 2025 on The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching for Integrity in the Age of AI (2025), which is also the title of her recently released book. Gallant discusses the role of teachers to facilitate and certify learning, tasks that are growing in complexity within the new technology landscape. She states that offloading cognitive tasks to AI as a student is fundamentally different from non-student offloading, as to achieve successful learning outcomes students must often overcome friction and frustration within their processes that AI can jump over for them. Margeret Merrill is the next guest on the program. Dr. Merrill is one of the primary organizers of SITT, and reflects on how SITT started, shifted virtual in 2020, and has grown to an annual event with an attendance of over 100 faculty members. She states that the Institute offers rich Q&A sessions. Merrill feels that the collaboration of multiple academic disciplines fosters a great space for bridging silos between different departments at R1 universities.

Tricia Bertram Gallant, Ph.D. is the Director of Academic Integrity and Triton Testing at UC San Diego, President Emeritus of the International Center for Academic Integrity. Tricia has authored numerous pieces on academic integrity and artificial intelligence. Her latest book (co-authored with David Rettinger) is The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching for Integrity in the Age of AI (2025) and her next book on Generative Artificial Intelligence and Academic Integrity - co-authored with Mary Davis (UK) & Zeenath Khan (UAE) - will be published by Cambridge Elements in 2026.

Margaret Merrill, PhD, is a Senior Instructional Design Consultant at the University of California, Davis. She works with faculty as they consider how to use technology in strategic and pedagogically sound ways in their face-to-face, hybrid, or online teaching. She creates and teaches workshops on technology and pedagogy, and researches, pilots, and supports technologies for teaching. Dr. Merrill is interested in how active learning, mobile learning, instructional use of video, and Universal Design for Learning can improve teaching and learning experiences. She has presented on mobile learning, accessibility, communities of practice, the design of faculty development programs, and communities among language instructors. Previously, Dr. Merrill has developed and implemented faculty support programs, created technology-supported foreign language learning materials for higher education and government projects, taught junior high French, and held the boom mic for the filming of a movie in Romania.

The Poetry Night Reading Series takes place on first and third Thursdays of the month at 7 PM, is generously supported by the people and poets of the Sacramento Valley, by John Natsoulas, Robby Nykodym, and by members of the staff at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Your host will be Dr. Andy Jones, the poet laureate emeritus of the City of Davis. The 9/17/25 iteration of the Poetry Night reading series will feature poets Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas and John Bell.

Find out more about Dr. Andy's Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com. Invite your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, subscribe to his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com.

On the 9/3/2025 Edition of Dr Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

Neil McRoberts joins the program to discuss being a plant epidemiologist, educator, poet, and lifelong learner. He shares a poem called “San Lucas,” which spawned from his long work-related drives across California. McRoberts recalls his move to the United States in 2010, and expresses excitement about his upcoming reading with Catriona McPherson at this week's Poetry Night in Davis reading night series. Dr. Andy finished the episode by reading an essay from his Substack titled, “Serendipity and Friendship."

Neil McRoberts has written poetry since a high school English teacher encouraged her class of 12 year olds to give it a go. In a notable early “triumph,” Neil won the high school annual speech contest four years later with a nihilistic tirade about the pointlessness of atomic bomb response drills, written in a mixture of prose and rhyming couplets. Since 2020, Neil has collaborated regularly with English ambient music composer and producer Harry Towell to write poetry for various releases on the WhitelabRecs label. His first professionally published poem will soon appear in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

The Poetry Night Reading Series takes place on first and third Thursdays of the month at 7 PM, is generously supported by the people and poets of the Sacramento Valley, by John Natsoulas, Robby Nykodym, and by members of the staff at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Your host will be Dr. Andy Jones, the poet laureate emeritus of the City of Davis. The featured readers for the September 4th, 2025 iteration of poetry night will be mystery novelist Catriona McPherson and Poet Neil McRoberts

Find out more about Dr. Andy's Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com. Invite your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, subscribe to his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com.

Kindra McDonald joins the program to discuss THE NATURE OF OUR TIMES: POEMS, an anthology at the intersection of poetry and climate change. McDonald states that the anthology serves as an outlet for poets to talk about their regions. She reads a poem “Lost and Found Fairtail,” before the next guest Luisa A, Igloria joins the program. Igloria outlines how central climate, and climate politics are to her poetics, and outlines the importance and inspirations behind theTHE NATURE OF OUR TIMES: POEMS anthology. The anthology has 210 contributors from researchers, poets, and conventional artists. She then reads two poems, one from Camille T. Dungy “Nematode”, and her own “Bats French Kiss With Mouthfuls of Blood.” The last guest of the hour is Mariam Ahmed, who speaks on the release of her first full-length collection, Hidden Parts. She discusses how University poetics and those communities are very special to her, and shares a poem titled “Laughter,” and an ode “Sleep/Keep.”

Kindra McDonald is the author of the books Teaching a Wild Thing, In the Meat years, and Fossils. She received her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. She is a teaching artist, educator, and conservationist, who leads a nonprofit organization in Norfolk, Virginia.

Luisa A. Igloria is the author of Caulbearer (Immigrant Writing Series Prize, Black Lawrence Press; 2024), Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Co-Winner, 2019 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Prize, Southern Illinois University Press, 2020),The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis (Phoenicia Publishing, Montreal, 2018), 12 other books, and 4 chapbooks. She was the inaugural recipient of the 2015 Resurgence Poetry Prize, UK—the world’s first major award for ecopoetry (now known as the Ginkgo Prize), selected by a panel headed by former UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. She is lead editor, along with co-editors Aileen Cassinetto and Jeremy S. Hoffman, of Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States (Paloma Press, September 2023). She is also co-editor, along with Aileen Cassinetto and David Hassler, of a new ecopoetry anthology to be released from Paloma Press on September 18, 2025 - THE NATURE OF OUR TIMES: POEMS

California poet Mariam Ahmed grew up in the Bay Area and Folsom. Ahmed has an MFA in Poetry from San Diego State University and a BA in English Literature with a minor in Sociology from the University of California, Davis, where she was a student of Dr. Andy. Her work has appeared in Poetry International, The Los Angeles Review, Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place & Nature, and many other literary journals. Her debut full-length collection, Hidden Parts, was published in January 2025. A certified Poet-Teacher with California Poets in the Schools, Ahmed spends her days guiding young writers in the classroom. She also mentors youth through local nonprofits and teaches English to newly arrived Afghan women and children. Ahmed lives in San Diego, where she enjoys teaching yoga and finding inspiration by the ocean.

The Poetry Night Reading Series takes place on first and third Thursdays of the month at 7 PM, is generously supported by the people and poets of the Sacramento Valley, by John Natsoulas, Robby Nykodym, and by members of the staff at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Your host will be Dr. Andy Jones, the poet laureate emeritus of the City of Davis.

Find out more about Dr. Andy's Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com. Invite your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, subscribe to his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com.