My Experience as an Educator

I started teaching college courses seven years ago and my passion for working with students has been strong ever since. I've taught courses from introductory biology for non-majors, to field courses at biological stations, to systematics courses for upper-level biologists. In each course, though, my goal is the same: When I teach, I hope to take students on a journey of self-discovery, guiding them to become better learners, more confident people, and more knowledgeable citizens.  

To meet these goals, I have created several active learning activities for small non-majors labs, inquiry based labs for introductory biology students, and case studies for upper level plant restoration courses. All of these activities were created with clear learning objectives and student-centered pedagogy in mind. To better inform my pedagogy, I also earned a certificate in College Teaching from Michigan state university, with a goal to provides graduate students a comprehensive preparation for teaching at the college level. I am also interested in empirically evaluating teaching strategies to determine if my teaching practices are creating equitable outcomes for all students. You can find information (and materials) for all of these below.