Education
- Ph.D. in Integrative Biology from University of Colorado Denver
- MS in STEM Education from Western Governor's University
- BS in Biology/Chemistry from University of Utah
Courses taught
- BIOS 1000 Animal Diversity
- BIOS 1710 Biological Sciences II: Ecology, Evolution, Animal Body Systems
Bio
“Did you know the coastline of England is infinite depending on the scale of measurement?”
I once tried to use that as a pickup line in high school, which tells you what you need to know about me. I grew up in a town just north of Salt Lake City where I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do beyond understanding things and explaining what I understood to others. In pursuit of this impulse, I’ve taught at aviaries and Nerd Nites, public schools and universities, and whether one wants to call it a calling or a compulsion it’s just what I do. Now I find myself at Ohio University doing what I love, and I couldn’t be happier.
Beyond this, I must say I also love my ants. They’re what I earned my Ph.D. in and to my mind they represent the issues of biology writ large. They exemplify the tension between parts and wholes, between cooperation and competition, and between robustness and efficiency of behavior. And, at the heart of it all, they are paragons of self-organization, that principle which undergirds all living things and sets them apart from the rest of the cosmos. I don’t think it’s an accident that myrmecologists often end up speculating about life at large. Once you start seeing them as superorganisms, it all falls into place.