I was born and raised in Montgomery County. I always had the travel bug and it has taken me to many places, such as Florida for college, Africa and Guam for grad school research and Ohio for a number of years. Now I’m back home again, and would love to use my experiences in my teaching to highlight diversity and differences in the world around us. Many of our students have never been out of Chester or Delaware counties before, let alone Pennsylvania or the U.S. I am, in many ways, their first exposure to the wonders of the human body and beyond, and I consider it an important task to help students make that first step into a larger world, both literally and figuratively.

I am a strong advocate for being creative in the classroom. This is fun for me but more importantly has direct benefits to students’ learning. To this end, I am constantly researching new and innovative pedagogical methods to improve both my teaching and the student experience. Teaching should be fun; students need a reason to come to class. I strive to give them such reasons by helping them to grasp complex physiological concepts in fun ways. My teaching is constantly evolving. I like to use technology in teaching as well. Teaching is truly where I belong. I like to use my enthusiasm and passion for biology and the human body and connect it to a larger context, such as nursing or other health/allied sciences, where our students are going ultimately after their biology classes.

Biology, ecology, evolution, herpetology, American Studies, biological humanities, multispecies ethnographies, folklore, anthrozoology, ethnobiology