I love helping people learn about the natural world, and I feel most comfortable talking to groups of people out in the woods with a turtle in hand. However, that can be a bit difficult during these uncertain times, so I've tried to bring the outdoors to my students enrolled in Vertebrate Zoology at Aurora University. You can check out that collection here: www.youtube.com/channel/UC_MeRxwZSAw1ur9Jo0ulTUA/playlists
While I was fortunate to be on a GA for my entire PhD, I made sure to keep up my classroom skills by taking graduate level pedagogy courses and giving 15+ guest lectures at various universities, on topics from field techniques and herpetology to conservation biology, occupancy analysis, and data visualization in R. I also taught as an adjunct instructor of record (yay for buzz words!) from 2012-2014 at Hofstra University, and have spent hours developing educational materials for nature centers, public talks, and primary/secondary school presentations. During the same time period, I moonlighted as an environmental educator at a local nature center. Finally, I think it's important to pay it forward, and I have mentored 10 post-baccalaureate interns, 2 undergraduate students, and several high school students over the course of my PhD and postdoc, as well as serving as an officer of the The Wildlife Society's Student Development Working Group and the TWS Early Career Professional Working Group. I was also an assistant scoutmaster for troops on Long Island, NY and rural Dare County, NC. |
Below are two recent public talks I gave in collaboration with NIU's STEAM Outreach program: