Teaching and Outreach
My career path would not be possible without the teachers and mentors that trained and inspired me. Likewise, many of my published projects would not have been possible without the undergraduate assistants who worked tirelessly scouring the literature, synthesizing datasets or pipetting parasite DNA. Thus, I have devoted large amounts of time and energy to teaching, training and hopefully inspiring the next generation of scientists, both in the lab and in the classroom. As a climate change ecologist, I have the unique opportunity to connect students with the science on a personal level, as students understand that climate change is likely to impact their lives in multiple ways.
Teaching
During my time as a postdoctoral researcher, I’ve had the chance to teach two courses as primary instructor. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I taught Climate Change Ecology, an upper-level and graduate course covering the impacts of climate change on wildlife. Although this course was online during the pandemic, I implemented a number of methods to make it as interactive as possible, devoting half of all class time to breakout sessions in which students answered thought-provoking questions, followed by large classroom discussions. At the University of South Florida (USF), I taught Biology Skills, an innovative online course in which students were given a dataset and asked to make figures, tables, and eventually write a paper and conduct peer review. Previously, I taught Introductory Biology II and Introductory Biology for Non-majors as a Teaching Assistant at USF and Binghamton University (as an undergraduate). Throughout my teaching career, I’ve prioritized analysis and deconstruction of concepts rather than memorization of facts, which I strongly believe carries longer-lasting benefits for students as they begin their careers. To further these goals, I served as the graduate representative on my department’s curriculum committee.
Mentoring
Undergraduate research assistants have played a large role in most of the projects in my research program. Students volunteering their time often enter research programs excited about the science, so my primary goal is to maintain that enthusiasm while imparting valuable skills that can enhance their career success. I strongly encourage my students to practice communicating their own research and have assisted multiple students in the development and presentation of posters at university-level symposia and regional meetings. As research in ecology is less diverse than in many other fields, I am proud that the majority of my undergraduate assistants have represented underrepresented socioeconomic and cultural groups. My students have gone on to attend graduate research programs, medical school, and veterinary school. As a postdoc, I’ve been mentoring a Master’s student at UW-Madison and serving on her thesis committee.
Outreach & Service
In Wisconsin, I’ve given several public presentations and a radio interview with WPR about my research. I also served as a Science Olympiad instructor in Madison-area middle and high schools. In Florida, during my PhD, I volunteered to give short presentations about our lab to incoming freshmen, talked to preschoolers about frogs for a day, served as a naturalist guide for both elementary and middle school students, and volunteered with Jane Goodall’s roots and shoots program. I served as a poster judge for the USF graduate research symposium as well as middle school students in Tampa. Before graduate school, I led educational programs for elementary school kids at Ash Meadows Wildlife Refuge in Nevada. Finally, I run a facebook page with over 5,000 followers from around the world in which I share research findings and photography.
I routinely provide my photography (free of charge) to other researchers for use in figures, presentations, news articles, or for journal cover submissions. My photography has appeared on journal covers ten times. I’ve given departmental research seminars at four universities (Univ. of Florida, Cornell, Oklahoma State, Yale) and presented five invited and six contributed talks at international conferences. In addition, I’ve reviewed 46 manuscripts for 27 journals.