Teaching Portfolio

Reconstructing the Tree of Life: an Introduction to Systematic and Phylogenetic Biology

I was a teaching assistant for this class taught by Field Museum curators Corrie Moreau and Richard Ree in the fall of 2011. This course is an introduction to phylogenetic techniques. I prepared and ran the weekly computer labs implementing the methods covered and gave two full lectures on next-generation sequencing and my research on acacia-ants.

The Public and Private Lives of Insects

I was a teaching assistant for this course in the winters of 2010 and 2015. Taught by Dr. Eric Larsen, this course is an introduction to insect ecology, evolution, and taxonomy. Each time I participated, I presented lectures on the social Hymenoptera and acacia-ants.

Ecology and Evolution in the Southwest

This is a two week undergraduate field course taught by Dr. Eric Larsen. I was a teaching assistant in June of 2009, 2010, and 2015. This course consists of two weeks of exploring the ecology of the desert southwest and performing research projects developed by the students.

Mentorship

Throughout my career, I have also directly mentored eight high school and undergraduate students. Their projects have typically included both wet-lab work performing basic molecular biology techniques in combination with computational methods for analyzing the data collected. I particularly enjoy mentoring students in basic programming and bioinformatics tools.