I’m an associate professor at Wright State University, mostly teaching geology to education majors.  My current research areas include paleoecology and geoscience education.  Fossil diatoms, pollen, and charcoal are buried and preserved in lake sediment every year, and this has been going on for since the latest ice age in many lakes.  These fossils provide continuous records of lake conditions, regional vegetation, and local climate thousands of years long.  In my classes, I’m trying to measure the effectiveness of different teaching techniques.  The greatest learning gains I am seeing are with cooperative problem-based learning and the most transitory are with lecture.

I have a Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior from the University of Minnesota, and worked as a graduate student and post-doc with the Limnological Research Center there. From 2000-2001, I was a lecturer with the University of Maryland - European Division, teaching general biology, math, and computer science to U.S. military personnel in Turkey, Bosnia, and Bahrain.  As a research associate at Carleton College, I studied pollen records from southeastern Minnesota and western Manitoba, and worked on modules for Starting Point, a website to help people teaching introductory Earth science.  I started teaching at Wright State in 2004.