Teaching
I entered graduate school knowing that I wanted a career that involved teaching at the college level. I made a point to investigate how much teaching support there was at each of the graduate institutions to which I applied, and how supportive my potential graduate advisor would be of my goals.
Students have a wonderful energy that can be drawn upon in the classroom. I have enjoyed teaching both graduate and undergraduate students while working on my PhD at the University of Georgia (UGA). Outside of the classroom I have worked on a number of teaching projects such as designing an inquiry organismal biology lab manual. I have also recruited and mentored numerous undergraduates in research. For a description of my teaching activities please see my teaching portfolio.
Figure 1: Two sophmore biology majors in an honors biology lab which I
am teaching. Here they are working on an experiment they designed to
test for differneces in transpiration rate between magnolia leaves with
intact cuticles and cuticles which had been reduced by abrasion. This
semester we were using the honors students to help "beta test" some of
the new inquiry labs we were writing.