Teaching and Mentoring

RESEARCH--TEACHING--PUBLICATIONS--OUTREACH--CONTACT

I am interested in teaching a variety of courses at the undergraduate and graduate level.  I hope to teach lecture courses, such as general biology, evolutionary biology, animal behavior, and developmental biology, that teach not only the specifics of a particular subject, but also the general importance and philosophy of science and evolution.  I also hope to teach “biodiversity” courses, such as ornithology or entomology, which delve into the diversity, ecology and physiology of a particular group.  Such courses given important context to scientific research.  Finally, I am interested in teaching a variety of specific seminar courses that keep abreast of the literature in areas such as phenotypic plasticity or evolutionary developmental biology.  My teaching experience to date, has consisted of guest lecturing in several courses (e.g., "Animal Form and Function," and Ornithology), designing and teaching labs in ornithology (with Alice Boyle) and animal behavior (with Dan Papaj), and organizing and leading journal discussion groups.  I hope to continue and expand such teaching efforts in the future.
 

To date I have mentored over ten undergraduate and high school students, teaching techniques such as protein analysis and brain dissections, and walking students through the scientific method from observations and questions all the way to analyses and interpretation.  I am interested in continuing mentoring, not only to help train the next generation of scientists, but also to broadly communicate the importance of scientific research.

Ornithology students birding
on a field trip to Mexico

Undergraduate research

updated May 15, 2008
all photos by E. Snell-Rood