Please note that I retired from SIUE in December, 2022 so I no longer teach any of these courses.
This course allows graduate students to attend a series of seminars by invited speakers and learn the skills of making effective scientific presentations.
This is a graduate course in which students read, critique, summarize, and discuss primary research articles. The topic varies each time it is taught. I taught this course five times, with the following themes: Restoration Ecology, Biological Effects of Climate Change, Foundations of Ecology, Demons in Eden: the Paradox of Plant Diversity, and Conservation of Endangered Species.
This is the department's statistics course. It covers basic statistical techniques with an emphasis on their applications in biology. I taught this course in rotation with other faculty. It was usually taught in the spring semester.
In this course, I introduced students to the fundamentals of conservation biology. Labs focused on the use of population models to manage species and minimize the risk of extinction under different conservation scenarios. Field trips allowed students to interact with professionals in a range of organizations involved in conservation, including government agencies, non-profit organizations, zoos, and botanical gardens. This course was usually taught in the fall semester.
This course, which I team-taught with Dr. Rick Essner, is always associated with a faculty-led travel study to locations outside the state of Illinois. It is designed to allow students to experience the biodiversity and natural history of regions that are very different from our immediate surroundings in southwestern Illinois. For example, in summer 2014, the course was taught in Panama. Assessment is based on a virtual collection of annotated photographs of animals and plants observed in the field, field notebooks, a species identification quiz, and post-trip exams. The course is in the process of being registered as a permanent part of the curriculum and will eventually be known as BIOL 405. It can be taken for graduate credit.
This course was also usually team-taught with Dr. Rick Essner and is generally associated with a faculty-led travel study to locations outside the state of Illinois. Students learn sampling and description methods used for animals and plant communities and then apply some of these techniques in independent field-based research projects. Assessment is based on a Powerpoint presentation and written report on the project, together with post-trip exams. The course is in the process of being registered as a permanent part of the curriculum and will eventually be known as BIOL 406. It can be taken for graduate credit.
This course allows undergraduate students to attend a series of seminars by invited speakers and learn the skills of making effective scientific presentations. It is generally taken in the senior year. In BIOL 492, students attend and learn to critique seminars. In BIOL 492M, students who have performed research projects for their Senior Assignment present their findings in the form of an oral or poster presentation.
This is an alternative way of satisfying the requirement for a Senior Assignment and is taken by students who have not undertaken a research project. Students work in groups to choose a topic, formulate a hypothesis, find published papers that have tested the hypothesis, and then prepare a poster presentation.
This course is an introduction to the basic principles of ecology. I taught it in rotation with other faculty. Labs were a mix of field-based exercises, a greenhouse experiment on plant competition, and virtual computer-based exercises that allowed students to explore various important topics in ecology. This courseis generally offered every semester.
This is a non-majors course that covers various topics in biology, such as genetics, human evolution, sustainable agriculture, and genetic engineering.
This is a course that introduces freshmen to the culture and facilities of the university while also teaching basic biology.
This is the second semester of our introductory biology sequence. It covers the diversity of microbes, protists, plants, fungi, and animals, the structure and funtion of plants, the structure and funtion of animals, and an introduction to ecology. I taught this course occasionally in rotation with other faculty.
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