I have long enjoyed teaching, and am
committed to excellence in all aspects of teaching. I believe that
research and teaching are complementary activities: active involvement in
research improves teaching and vice versa. I was named to the University
of Illinois’ list of teachers rated excellent based on student evaluations
three times in six years.
I taught courses in behavioral ecology
and introductory biology in graduate school, courses in population biology
and ecological genetics at the University of Illinois, and now coordinate
and teach half of the graduate evolutionary biology course, teach one
third of the advanced field ecology and evolution course at Michigan
State, and lead graduate seminars one or two semesters per year. My
population biology course covered population ecology, population genetics,
and the interface between these fields. The central theme of my advanced
undergraduate/graduate level ecological genetics course and my portions of
my two current courses mirror a central theme of my research -- how do
organisms adapt to their biotic and abiotic environments?
For many years in these courses I lacked
a book that approached evolutionary genetics from a conceptual rather than
a mathematical viewpoint, and that focused on questions and examples from
natural populations. Therefore, in I wrote A Primer of Ecological
Genetics (2004, Sinauer) with Dan Hartl. I wrote the text, drawing on
Hartl’s Population Genetics primer for examples and organization for the
first three chapters, and Hartl read and commented extensively on the
entire text. While the book has yet to be formally reviewed, John N.
Thompson of the University of California at Santa Cruz said this about the
book in an unsolicited email:
I have been reading through your new Primer of Ecological Genetics. It is
absolutely terrific, and I plan on making it required reading for graduate
students in my lab and for other graduate students on whose committees I
serve. Your book is bound to go a long way in clearing up fuzzy thinking
about basic concepts at the interface of evolution and ecology. Just as
importantly, I think your book will result in much better experimental
design -- and much clearer discussion of results -- in future
dissertations and the papers that result from them.”
My graduate seminar courses often focus
on one or two topics each semester. For example, in a plant-insect
interactions seminar, we concentrated on pollination in the first half of
the semester and plant-herbivore interactions in the second half. I have
also led seminars in plant ecology, ecological and evolutionary aspects of
plant reproduction, sexual selection, and evolutionary ecology. I work
with the students in choosing the readings in an effort to give the
students a comprehensive overview of current knowledge and approaches in
each area. During discussion I ask leading and probing questions,
encouraging the students to defend their positions and think critically
about larger conceptual issues raised by the papers.
I believe that equal in importance to my
classroom teaching is providing students with research experience; to this
end, I have had over 150 undergraduates from a number of different
colleges and universities do research in my lab. In the past few years I
have also begun hosting high school interns from a local math and science
center. Most of the undergraduates and all of the high school students
work with me and my graduate students on our ongoing projects. Each
student is exposed to a variety of projects and learns several
techniques. We have required weekly lab meetings for all members of the
lab, at which we discuss all of the projects in the lab, solve problems
that arise, and read and discuss papers relevant to our research. As in
my lecture courses, I try to give research students experience in all
aspects of the scientific method. Some of the undergraduates go on to do
independent distinction projects. My distinction students are expected to
go through the entire process, from defining the question to preparing a
paper for publication. To date ten undergraduates have received
distinction for work in my lab, and six are co-authors on eight published
papers.
I involve my incoming graduate students
immediately in collaborative research with me. This enables them to learn
my approaches to research, get hands-on experience, and publish papers
while they are developing an independent Ph.D. thesis project. I find
that most students are fixated on course work when they enter graduate
school, which is not surprising given the emphasis in college. While
coursework can be very important in graduate training, many graduate
students have difficulty making the transition from excellence in the
classroom to excellence in research. This is my main goal in their early
research experience. To date I have co-authored 15 papers with eight of
my graduate students (none of these are from their Ph.D work). In 2003 I
received the MSU College of Natural Science Outstanding Graduate Advisor
award. |
