Teaching

Teaching philosophy and experience

As an educator, I look to innovate in ways to engage students in the process of doing science. To this end, my teaching employs problem-based learning techniques; integrates research and teaching and student peer review; and utilizes real world examples to engage students across disciplines.

I have been involved in teaching and developing a flagship course on research methods in paleobiology at UT Austin that teaches students of all levels how to do science through primary literature review, in-class peer review of scientific writing, and data analysis and visualization using R. I have also taught statistics and programming workshops using R to colleagues (Programming and Applied Statistics using R workshop, various lab meeting workshops), and I have experience teaching diverse lab courses (Comparative Vertebrate Morphology, Microbiology, Ornithology, Principle of Biology, Genetics).

Research Mentorship

I have been mentoring diverse students at The University of Texas at Austin (8 undergraduates, 1 McNair Scholar) on research involving the evolution of melanin-based color in birds, color reconstruction in extinct dinosaurs, and feather evolution. In the past, I have co-mentored undergraduate biology students at the University of Akron (Jean-Pierre Iskandar, Chance Mitan) that have developed independent research projects, conducted the work, and won various awards for their presentations. One student, Jean-Pierre Iskandar (pictured below) is first author on a recent publication in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. These close interactions have helped shape my own thinking about how people learn and ways to more effectively communicate aspects of my own research.

J-P Iskandar winning the poster competition at an undergradate research symposium at the University of Akron

At the Field Museum, I have continued mentoring undergraduate students on projects ranging from feather color evolution to geometric morphometrics and genomics.

Outreach

I am commited to making my science accessible to a broad audience. To this end, I have been actively involved in local outreach events. I also love my daughter Paige.

Me at an outreach event at a local bar in Chicago talking about a newly-discovered rainbow-colored dinosaur