Courses Taught

My teaching focuses on how organisms solve problems — finding food, avoiding disease, raising offspring, communicating, cooperating, competing, and surviving in changing environments. Courses span behavioral ecology, field biology, and evolutionary medicine, with a strong emphasis on observation, scientific writing, and applying evolutionary thinking to real biological problems. Students are encouraged to think like behavioral ecologists and evolutionary biologists: generating hypotheses, evaluating evidence, and asking not only how biological systems work, but why they evolved in the first place. Many courses integrate primary literature, collaborative projects, and public-facing science communication.

Bio 51 — Methods in Ecology

This course introduces students to the practical and conceptual foundations of ecological field research. Students learn how to observe organisms in natural settings, collect and analyze ecological data, and design studies that connect natural history to hypothesis-driven science.

Field projects vary by semester, but commonly include studies of animal behavior, social insects, plant–animal interactions, and environmental responses in local ecosystems. Emphasis is placed on careful observation, experimental design, statistical reasoning, and scientific communication.

The course also provides students with hands-on experience working with live social insects, including honey bee observation hives and field-based behavioral studies.

Bio 130 — Animal Behavior

Animal Behavior explores how and why animals behave as they do, integrating mechanisms, development, evolutionary history, and adaptive function through the framework of Tinbergen’s Four Questions.

Topics include communication, cooperation, conflict, mating systems, collective behavior, parental care, cognition, social evolution, and decision-making across diverse animal systems. Students learn to move beyond memorization by generating and evaluating hypotheses about behavior using comparative and evolutionary reasoning.

The course emphasizes scientific thinking through discussion of primary literature, observational exercises, and the interpretation of real behavioral data.

Bio 183 — Darwinian Medicine

Darwinian Medicine examines human health and disease through the lens of evolutionary biology. Students explore why natural selection leaves humans vulnerable to disease and how evolutionary trade-offs, mismatch, conflict, and life-history theory shape modern health outcomes.

Topics include fever, aging, cancer, anxiety, obesity, reproductive biology, infectious disease, placebo effects, sleep, and host–pathogen interactions. Students are encouraged to critically evaluate adaptationist explanations while distinguishing between proximate and evolutionary causes.

A major emphasis of the course is scientific communication. Students develop manuscript-style writing, oral presentations, and public-facing explanations of evolutionary medicine topics, with the goal of learning how to communicate complex scientific ideas clearly and responsibly to broad audiences.

Mentorship and Collaborative Learning

I view teaching and mentorship as extensions of scientific inquiry itself. Across courses and research experiences, students are encouraged to ask ambitious questions, challenge assumptions, and develop confidence in their ability to think scientifically.

Many student projects evolve into independent research questions, collaborative writing efforts, or public scholarship initiatives. My goal is not simply to teach biological facts, but to help students learn how scientists observe, reason, communicate, and change their minds.