Lectures on the evolution, behavior, ecology, and life history of amphibians and reptiles. Laboratory exercises and field trips emphasize identification, life history, adaptations, and field methods.

Through this course I learned about the global diversity of reptiles and amphibians at the family level. The course focused on themes of taxonomy, ecomorphology, biogeography, and conservation. 

The final project known as Project Morph focused on how different habitats have caused the unique morphological adaptations in herpetofauna. My presentation, to local middle school students, covered how the diversity of snake tail morphology can indicate the snake's environment. 

Note: after astounding completion of this course I was invited to serve as a post-graduate Teaching Assistant when the course was taught next in Winter 2025.

Field and lecture-based introduction to the scientific study of rivers, lakes, and wetlands. Introduces basic physical/chemical/biological concepts and techniques; emphasizes ecological literacy and seeks to develop interpretive skills and reasoning. Includes an overview of aquatic fauna and flora, and a survey of the ecology of major types of rivers and streams, lakes, wetlands, and ocean estuaries. Interactions between the hydrological cycle, the landscape, and human activities provide the basic theme around which ecosystem presentations are organized. Lab sections develop basic chemical and biological identification skills during the first half of the course; the second half focuses on weekly field trips to representative ecosystems and their ecological evaluation.

With this field-based course, I spent time learning about the geologic history and physical characteristics that differentiate all bodies of water. Additionally, I was exposed to the ecological food webs and macroinvertebrate communities found in the freshwater systems in northern Michigan. I learned how to gather data and information in these habitats. 

As a part of the final course project I completed a science communication brochure about frog occurrence.

The goal of this course is to provide students with an understanding of how evolution proceeds through time in relation to geography. The course explores the limitation of distributions of organisms by barriers, including climate, effects on species formation and extinction, species abundance and richness, dispersal, and vicariance.

With this course I learned how to think spatially, and to question the distribution and the history that lead to current occurrence patterns of organisms. I was exposed to and used databases such as GBIF, PBDB, GeoCAT, and IUCN.

This course had two major projects, one a poster presentation, and the second a ten-minute seminar talk, I did both on the biogeography of the Hydrophiinae subfamily of sea snakes, with Anna Zhao.

Ecology is the study of interactions between organisms and their environment. This course is an introduction to core principles, classic experiments, current events, and ongoing research in ecology. It asks: How do organisms survive in nature? Why do they live where they do and not elsewhere? When do they increase in abundance, and when do they decrease? How do they modify their environment, and how do they respond to change? This course is taught at the University of Michigan Biological Field Station (UMBS) in the spring and/or summer terms only.

With this field-based course, I got to simulate thinking like an ecologist by learning how to apply knowledge about the natural world to develop research questions. I practiced collecting standard ecological data such as tree DBH, flora change along transects, fauna occurrence differences between plots, abundance ratios, etc... 

The course will provide the opportunity for in-depth discussion of the ecological and evolutionary principles underlying important issues in biology and human affairs. Topics will be chosen to illustrate the action (and interaction) of ecological and evolutionary processes, and discussions will explore the theory, empirical evidence, and methodologies relevant to these processes. 

With this course we debated complex ethical topics and moral scientific dilemmas within the field of ecology and evolution. We discussed career paths, how to make CVs and resumes, and how to network within the scientific community.

For the final project I gave a short (ten-minutes) talk on my undergraduate thesis.  

The goal of this course is to become better versed in both the theory and practice of visualizing quantitative data, ensuring best practices in designing figures that are maximally accessible across audiences and in communicating complex data in clear and effective ways, programming with R. 

With this course, I learned how to use R to create visualizations of my data, and more importantly; how to be intentional about designing figures: "design is choice" - Edward Tufte.

For the final project I completed the figures that I would later use in my senior undergraduate thesis on sea snake sexual dimorphism. 

Data science combines mathematical and computational skills, together with statistical and ethical reasoning, to draw conclusions from data. A programming language is introduced in the context of data analysis. Probability and algorithms are developed as tools for formal statistical modeling and inference, and for exploratory analysis and visualization of data.

With this course I was able to expand my data processing abilities by learning to use programming languages like Python and R.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a powerful tool for environmental analysis. This course is designed to introduce students to the use of GIS to analyze, explore and visualize the spatial relationships and patterns of the biological, ecological, social and physical processes that can affect the environment and human health.  Theory and application of computer-based systems for the analysis and representation of spatial data.

Through this course, I learned how to use the ArcGIS Pro program to show geographic and spatial data.