The primary goal of my doctorate program was to prepare students for teaching at colleges and universities while honing their research abilities. Through seminars and Supervised Teaching Internships I gained valuable content area expertise and theoretical background on learning. Moreover, the D.A. program stresses the importance of communicating science to broad audiences through science courses for non-majors, collaboration with local primary and secondary school teachers, and community outreach.

I have taught many subjects in many different situations and settings—from demonstrating water chemistry sampling to citizen scientists in West Virginia, to educating volunteer Coast Guard members on the ecological connections between mangroves, sea grass, and coral reefs as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines. I currently work for the North Carolina Dept. of Environmental Quality and regularly find myself talking to landowners and recreators about the connections between water quality, land conservation, and protecting livelihoods. During my summer field seasons as a graduate student at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, CO I mentored undergraduates as they developed projects, analyzed their data, and presented their results verbally and written. I also taught many undergraduate Ecology and Biology 101 laboratory sections, and helped revise and develop new materials for those courses. More recently, I successfully developed an entirely text-book free non-majors biology course.

I’ve identified the major tenets of my teaching philosophy based on some phrases I find myself repeating to my students and dictate how I structure lessons: everything is connected and everything changes. By encouraging students to develop their abilities and think critically I help students learn to think in depth about the subject matter by giving them practice in evaluating evidence and potentially dubious claims. For example, during my internship in Plant Ecology students had to identify and explain factors that