Courses taught

• Biology 110: Basic Concepts and Biodiversity: The goal of this course is to introduce you to the fundamental concepts that are common to all living organisms and to examine the diversity of life on Earth.  This course satisfies the General Education - Natural Sciences (GN) requirement and includes a 2-hour laboratory.  4 credit hours.
  
  
• Biology 427: Evolution This course provides students with a working knowledge of the basic principles of biological evolution.  These principles include natural selection, speciation, adaptation, population genetics/molecular evolution, and phylogenetics.  The intended audience for this course is junior or senior-level science majors tht have an interest in evolution and have taken Biol 110, and Biol 230 or Biol 220 (or are taking it concurrently).  3 credit hours
  
  
• Environmental Studies (ENVST) 100:  Visions of Nature This course introduces students to a variety of academic perspectives on the natural world.  We touch on the role of nature and the views of nature in the arts and humanities (art, literature, history, ethics), the social sciences (economics, public policy, law, sociology, psychology), and the natural sciences (biology, ecology, geology, chemistry, environmental science).  We also explore historical and aesthetic attitudes by which nature has been apprehended in western civilization, especially in America; the formative value of nature in our cultural history; and the role of nature in our current value systems and social and economic structures. This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of environmental studies, the concerns in environmental science, and the theory and practice of ecological science.  ENVST 100 is experiential and involves multiple field trips and is team taught.  This course satisties the General Education - Social Sciences (GS) requirement and is the gateway course to the Environmental Studies degree program. 3 credit hours.
  
  
• Environmental Studies (ENVST) 400:  Senior Seminar--Watersheds   A senior seminar is a unique opportunity for students and faculty to work closely in an applied fashion.  ENVST 400 is a capstone course because it serves as the ENVST major’s ultimate goal (other than graduation)—the point in which you get to use all that you have learned in your course work.  During the semester, students will make use of methodological and analytical skills acquired in the environmental studies curriculum.  While there will be a number of graded assignments, the final research paper serves as each student’s ultimate accomplishment as an undergraduate ENVST major.   Your final paper (in this case, a watershed management plan) will provide you with a representative writing sample for use on the job market or in graduate school applications. 
  
  With these goals in mind, the actual topic of the course serves as only a jumping off point and a focus of conversation for the class as a whole.  “Local and regional watersheds” is intended to serve as a general emphasis for a broad range of student inquiry.  The focus of class time will be the understanding of what a watershed is, what are its components, what affects those components, and how is it ultimately managed.  We will focus on our own Spring Run watershed in the context of the larger Chesapeake Bay watershed in which it lies.  We will have an intensive 3-day field trip to the Chesapeake Bay at the end of March as well as a few field trips within the local watershed (many of these you will go on independently).