I love teaching. The world is profoundly strange and full of wonders, the plant world doubly so, and I delight in opening students’ eyes to it all.

I have twelve semesters’ experience as a teaching assistant; I’ve TAed at the Ohio State University for EEOB 210 (Local Flora) and at UW-Madison for BOT 400 (Plant Systematics), BOT 401 (Vascular Flora of Wisconsin), and BIO 152 (Introductory Biology II).

I also assisted with a BOT 575 seminar, Beringian Botany, whose summer field session taught 20 students field botany, systematics, and population genetics in Alaska’s North Slope and Seward Peninsula (and the Botany 2022 conference in Anchorage). More details on the Beringian Botany project are available from the primary instructor, Dr. Ingrid Jordon-Thaden, and from the UW Botany Dept. alumni newsletter (see page 6).

I am also working on a Delta teaching certificate, a UW-Madison CIRTL program that develops future faculty’s teaching skills.

Outside the classroom, I have volunteered for COSI Columbus and the Madison Science Museum both in exhibit/workshop design and front-end teaching. I helped organize and run two consecutive Idaho Botanical Forays, long-weekend plant-collecting and outreach trips hosted by the state’s major herbaria. At BOTANY 2014, I co-led a field trip for the American Fern Society. My Three-Minute Thesis talk won first prize in the 2017 UW-Madison contest. I also frequent a few online plant-identification forums, where I volunteer my ID skills for fun and practice.