Much like my research methods, I teach a highly variable set of courses across both educational levels (freshman through senior) and disciplines (see below). I am always eager to learn and genuinely love teaching. My educational background is highly diverse and allows me to teach across many different areas of biology. I build my courses around real-world applications, hands-on experiences, and critical thinking. Anyone can memorize a list, but doing so does very little to build knowledge. My students learn about my education, how I synthesized the lectures for them, and how to break complex problems into pieces they can understand and integrate into a better understanding of the bigger concepts.
I take an open book approach to everything I do. For every class I teach, I implement my own teaching evaluations after their first exam. The evaluation is a modified version of one recommended by Vanderbilt University's Center for Teaching. This allows me to evaluate my effectiveness in real-time after the student's have received a full lecture series and the associated exam material. We review it all together during the next lecture so they can see the full process surrounding my teaching style and any modifications that I will make in response to their recommendations.
I take an open book approach to everything I do. For every class I teach, I implement my own teaching evaluations after their first exam. The evaluation is a modified version of one recommended by Vanderbilt University's Center for Teaching. This allows me to evaluate my effectiveness in real-time after the student's have received a full lecture series and the associated exam material. We review it all together during the next lecture so they can see the full process surrounding my teaching style and any modifications that I will make in response to their recommendations.
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I created this course at MSSU in my third year. It is a traditional lecture/lab course with three hours of lecture per week and one, three hour lab. In lecture, students learned the evolution, anatomy, physiology, taxonomy, and systematics of reptiles and amphibians. They also learned the native herps of Missouri and the surrounding area (~200 species in total). This course has a substantial field component involving active searching, trapping, and capturing the native reptiles and amphibians of Missouri. The course culminates in a field trip to SE Missouri where we actively search and trap within the Missouri Department of Conservation's Duck Creek conservation area and the Mingo National Wildlife Refuge (under state and federal permits). The class actively collects for the needed specimen to expand our museum collection. We have also received considerable donations from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Wichita State University, the University of Central Missouri, Missouri State University, and the Sternberg Museum of Natural History.
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Mammalogy is built in a similar style to Herpetology with three hours of lecture and a three hour lab each week. This class will continue to evolve as I expand the mammal collection (both skulls and pelts) for the teaching museum. We have a small but expanding collection for the students to work with. Given the decline in many mammal species and the lack of historical collecting from prior professors, many of the rare specimens will only be represented by casts and molds. In lecture, students learn the evolution, diversity, systematics, and physiology of living mammals. In lab, students learn to identify native MO mammals to species from skulls and pelts. The class learns a lot of field techniques and actively traps for all mammal species of Missouri. I have been able to acquire @100 small mammal and mesocarnivore traps and several dozen camera traps to rapidly increase our collection and knowledge of mammal diversity in SE Missouri.
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General Ecology is a required lecture/lab course that all Biology majors must take at MSSU. Therefore, the class contains students from all biological degree paths, many of which are not focused on conservation and wildlife biology. With that in mind, I have tried to build a very hands-on class that has applications to all those who take the course. We work on a semester-long project involving chickens as cadavers in different ecosystems with different levels of protection from mesocarnivores. We also actively trap for the insect biodiversity that visits the bodies to compare biodiversity values across ecosystems. We also help to manage an introduced species in the watershed on our campus. Other lab days are spent learning mark-recapture techniques on prairie grasshopper populations, taking macro-invertebrate diversity samples, and combating tree succession on our campus prairie.
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I like this course for the challenge that it presents to both myself and the students. The first time I taught the course, I used Minitab and Past 3 (both are drop-down menu based). The following year, I redesigned the course towards an open-source model using RStudio. This allowed my to teach the students more complex methods and how to code. This course is not for the luke-warm, it is very challenging. For that reason, I hold open lab hours dedicated to this course for those students who need assistance.
The first quarter of the course is focused on experimental design and the common pitfalls that biologists often encounter when designing projects. The middle portion of the course focuses on many of the common parametric and non-parametric statistics (Chi-square, t-test family, ANOVA). The remaining portion of the class focuses on multiple regression/ANCOVA and model selection procedures. By the time the students are done with this course, they have received a stronger statistical training than what I received prior to starting my PhD. |
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This class is a socially-intense, full-immersion, field experience. The class size is limited by the number of seats available in our field vehicle (10, including myself). We spend several weeks in the Northern Kalahari desert working in the Okavango River Delta. We spend the semester prior learning all the necessary information about the region, animal and plant diversity, and the necessary safety procedures.
At the end of the semester, we travel to Northern Botswana to the last stronghold of the African Elephant (~110,000 individuals!). While there, we track the large mammal populations of the region and setup several dozen camera traps throughout the region to better survey the diversity of the region. We have no running water, electricity, or hard shelters. Nothing but a great time in one of the last wildlands on the planet! |
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This is a lecture only course that covers all of the traditional evolutionary principles as well as up to date evolutionary theory within the framework of advancing technology and our understanding of molecular regulation. Evolution is the glue holding all of biology together. It explains all of the underlying foundations to all of modern biological sciences. Understanding how it works at both micro and macro levels can benefit any student of science. They read historical and current literature and learn to synthesize evolutionary concepts into hypothesis-based predictions. Students leave the course with an understanding of Earth's history, Darwinian principles, speciation, biogeography, systematics, and human evolution. |
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Principles of Biology (II) is a freshman-level course that introduces several major areas of biology. This class is a continuation of Principles of Biology (I). Where POB (I) focuses on the major aspects of biology that are similar across Earth's history (genetics, metabolism, photosynthesis, etc.), POB (II) focuses on the diversity seen across life. Students get exposure to evolution, ecology, and animal/plant biology. The lab heavily focuses on anatomy, taxonomy, and systematics of plant, fungi, invertebrate, and vertebrate diversity. This is also the first exposure to multiple dissections for many students. Throughout the course, students dissect earthworms, roundworms, grasshoppers, crayfish, squid, mussels, starfish, sea cucumbers, fish, frogs, and pigs. |
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Principles of Biology (I) is often the first biology course for many students entering college. For some, this course is a simple transition into college-level expectations. For others, the class is the first major challenge to their education. The course covers a wide array of principles in lecture. The first lecture series covers Earth's history and basic cell biology. The second and third lecture series are comprehensive lectures on cellular metabolism and photosynthesis. The final series covers ecology and evolutionary principles. The lab focuses on hypothesis testing, cell identification, microscope use, and lab techniques. |
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Special Topics Courses
I also supervise a lot of students in non-traditional courses. Often, these courses involve a lot of one on one interaction where the students gain hands-on experience in lab, field, and professional settings.