Teaching / Mentoring

Teaching philosophy

In life, we are often faced with new knowledge and must decipher what knowledge to trust. This skill is applicable to many areas of life such as keeping up with current events, making medical decisions, and navigating politics. It is therefore my goal to give students the necessary tools to recreate this process: thinking independently and using that thought process to decipher what knowledge to trust. The task of learning these processes, however, falls primarily on the students as I utilize an active learning approach in my teaching. To give the students the tools to decipher what knowledge to trust, I emphasize critical and independent thinking in my courses and create a learner-centered classroom to encourage students to apply those skills in real time.

Courses

See my CV for a full list.

Animal Behavior (instructor of record). Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD), Summer 2026. The goal of this course is to give students a solid understanding of topics in animal behavior and have them apply those principles in an independent research project.

Patterns in Nature (instructor of record). MIAD, Fall 2025-Present. The goal of this course is to give students hands-on experience with the scientific method, problem solving, and critical thinking.

General Ecology Lab. UW-Milwaukee, Spring 2022-Present. Teaching assistant and head TA (Fall 2023-Present); co-authored new laboratory exercises on survivorship in humans and stream ecology.

Guest Lecturer. UW-Milwaukee. Ecology (Spring 2024, Fall 2024, Fall 2025) and Behavioral Ecology (Spring 2023); topics covered ecological succession, evolution, and the role of hormones in behavior.

Earlier teaching: Human Anatomy and Physiology Lab (UW-Milwaukee); Invertebrate Zoology Lab, General Ecology Lab, Biostatistics Lab, and Introduction to Biology Lab (Illinois State University); Statistics Tutor (Ohio Dominican University).

Mentoring philosophy

During my undergraduate degree, research opportunities were “few and far between”. This lack of opportunity hindered my progress towards graduate school and in the field of animal behavior more generally. One of my career goals is to offer opportunities to undergraduate researchers that I never had access to. I do this by incorporating undergraduate researchers at all stages of the research process starting from brainstorming initial ideas for a project to communicating the final results to the public.

As a mentor, I prioritize communication and making myself accessible to my mentees. This often comes in the form of weekly check-ins to ensure that my mentees are confident in their work and that I can help troubleshoot any problems. Between these check-ins my mentees largely work independently which helps them gain confidence in their own research abilities.

To date I have mentored 20 undergraduate researchers. Four of these undergraduates will be coauthor on future publications and one undergraduate has presented our research at several local conferences. I have also mentored 10 high school students through the Mentor Matching Engine - a virtual mentor program.