The same fascination with the natural world and the need to understand how natural systems respond to environmental change that motivates my research program also animates my teaching. My goal as a teacher is to instill an appreciation and motivation for learning, impart knowledge about ecological concepts and principles, and provide students with the skills to apply that knowledge to diverse situations in their lives.
I have taught in diverse settings for many years. In college, as a trip leader and the vice-president of the Outing Club and as a staff member of Project WILD (Wilderness Initiatives for Learning at Duke) I taught wilderness skills to my peers while leading rock climbing, backpacking, and whitewater rafting trips. As a member of the Student Conservation Association’s NH AmeriCorps program, I became an environmental educator, teaching basic ecological concepts to elementary school children, and working with older kids in after-school programs. Through this work I had the opportunity to introduce urban youth, many of whom had come to the U.S. from other parts of the world, to nearby natural areas. Later, I taught third grade for a year at a bilingual school in Copán, Honduras. As a graduate student, and now postdoc, I’ve taught in a variety of settings, from formal classrooms to field-based mentoring to outreach with school children and the general public. I’m especially interested in encouraging students from under-represented groups to learn about ecology, and several mentees have been the first in their families to attend college.
Some of my teaching experience:
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The Ecology, Economy, and Future of Maple Syrup (Instructor of record)
Forest Tree and Shrub Identification (Guest Lecturer)
Harvard University
Global Change Ecology: Forests, Ecosystem Function, and the Future (Guest Lecturer)
Workshop on mixed-effects modeling in R (Teaching Assistant)
University of Vermont
Natural History and Field Ecology (Lab Instructor)
Introduction to Environmental Science (Teaching Assistant)
Biostatistics (Teaching Assistant)
Insect Biodiversity (Teaching Assistant)
Wake Forest University
Biological Principles (Lab Instructor)
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (Lab Instructor)
Community Ecology (Teaching Assistant)
Biology & the Human Condition (Lab Instructor)
Tropical Ecology (Guest Lecturer)
Tufts University
Tropical Ecology and Conservation (Guest Lecturer)