Mark Cable Rains

Teaching

Research

Publications

Personal

As a student, I greatly appreciated outstanding teaching. Whenever I greatly appreciated a particular instructor, I always took the time to reflect upon what it was that I appreciated. It was from these observations that I developed the basic teaching philosophy that I employ in my courses today. Know your students. Creatively engage your students. And always teach the fundamentals.

I love to teach. To me, teaching is largely a matter of storytelling. Random facts are not easily recalled, but stories are easily recalled at much later dates. Each lecture is a story, beginning with character development and ending with unified conclusions. Throughout, I remain both upbeat and slightly offbeat. Each lecture is sprinkled with smaller stories culled from my past. These stories are often funny, either because I have a funny past or because I have a funny perception of my past. (Probably a bit of both.) These stories are often completely unscripted – I often don’t know I’m going to tell a story until the words start coming out of my mouth. Regardless, these stories add both entertainment and information because they always serve to reinforce some important element of the material.

Bottom line – learning is supposed to be fun. If it were not, then why would anybody ever have bothered? I certainly would not have, nor would I have chosen education as my profession. And fun is what truly motivates me....

Dr. Dickie Duncan, an episodic and typically catastrophic guest lecturer in my courses.

The objectives of this course are to introduce the principles affecting groundwater occurrence and flow, and to introduce the tools typically used by professional hydrogeologists in the study and management of groundwater occurrence and flow. We explore the physical properties of aquifers; the fundamentals of groundwater flow; groundwater flow to wells and through local, intermediate, and regional groundwater flow systems; groundwater chemistry; field and numerical modeling approaches to the study of groundwater occurrence and flow; groundwater management; and water law.

The objectives of this course are to introduce students to a variety of tools typically used by professional hydrologists and hydrogeologists in the study and management of surface water and groundwater occurrence and flow. The course is based on the USF campus, with field trips to central and south Florida.

Working hard in Summer Field School.

The objectives of this course are to examine the roles vegetation play in the hydrologic cycle, and to examine the roles hydrological processes play in controlling ecosystem structure and function. In the first part of the course, we follow water from atmospheric vapor, to condensation and rainfall, to surface water and groundwater flow, to plant uptake and flow through plant tissues, and to flow back to the atmosphere via evapotranspiration. In the second part of the course, we explore the biogeochemistry of submerged soils; biological adaptations to life in submerged soils; gradient analysis and catenas; the special ecohydrological case of rivers; and the effects of vegetation change on hydrological processes.

Fluvial Hydrology & Geomorphology (GLY 6573)

The objectives of this course are to explore flowing water and the geomorphic consequences of flowing water in fluvial systems. We explore the mechanics of open channel flows, primarily to understand the potential energy available to do work. We focus, however, on the geomorphic responses to work, including channel initiation, sediment transport, and channel adjustment.