I am driven by a desire to help students expand their own thinking and get excited about the natural world.  I work to give students the tools they need to pursue careers as change makers.  In the classroom I approach these goals in several ways.  Above all else I emphasize process over content.  I help students engage in the scientific process.  Through this practice of science students learn concepts.  However, I find that when students leave my classroom they have the skills they need to find new credible sources of information and understand new concepts as needed.  I help students build a lattice of background knowledge they can use to make connections and integrate new ideas more easily in the future.

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Plant Physiology (BIOL 4300)– Fall 2017

Course Description: In this class we will explore physiological, developmental, morphological, and anatomical adaptations of flowering plants to diverse environments. We will utilize readings from textbooks, popular science, and the primary literature to explore concepts such as: drought adaptation, seed dormancy, plant hormone signaling, phytoremediation, and biorobotics. Students will be expected to lead critical discussions of special topics in the primary literature.  Labs will be an opportunity to design experiments to address some of these concepts in more detail.

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Ecology & Evolution (BIOL 3800) – Spring 2018

Course Description: This course concerns processes and patterns that occur either within populations (a collection of organisms sharing a defined area), among populations (communities), or individual species. This course will begin by providing an overview of the study of genetic change in populations over time, which is broadly the study of evolution.
The second portion of this class will be an overview of the study of interactions of species with their environment, which is the study of ecology. The two fields of ecology and evolution are inherently coupled to each other, but evolution can be understood as the byproduct of ecological interactions playing out over time (selection), plus some quirks of reproduction that affect changes in gene frequencies over time (genetic drift).

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Biostatistics (BIOL 3000) - Spring 2018

In the 21st century, nearly every facet of our lives is shaped by data.  Knowing how to parse, visualize, and draw conclusions from data using statistical methods are vital skills in almost every skilled professional field (not just academia!).  It is also critical to being an informed citizen and understanding the meaning and validity of statistics presented to us by the media, politicians, and other sources.  To that end, this course provides a broad introduction to the principles and practice of data analysis and statistical inference with a particular focus on applications to biology-related fields.  In addition to analytic problem solving, you will also get hands-on experience using both Microsoft Excel and R (a widely-used statistical software package) to apply both exploratory analysis and statistical inference techniques to a variety of data sets.

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Plant Ecology (BIOL 4620) - Spring 2019

Course Description: Plants and plant communities in relation to physical and biotic environments, ecophysiology, demography, species interactions, community structure, and ecosystem function. Students will be expected to lead critical discussions of special topics in the primary literature.  Labs will be an opportunity to design experiments to address some of these concepts in more detail. This course is taught in the same style as Plant Physiology.

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