Undergraduate Mentorship

I was both a mentor and the teaching assistant (TA) of the 2009 El Verde REU program and a mentor in 2010, 2012 and 2022. As a mentor, I guided a student in their proposal design and presentation, data collection, data analysis and presentation of a final report. As the TA I helped select articles for and lead a weekly journal club, coordinated weekly talks by invited scientists, planned and executed recreational activities and helped other the students with all aspects of their projects when their mentors were not present.

During the two years that I was a DDCSP mentor, ten (5 each year) North Carolina State University (NCSU) DDCSP students flew to Puerto Rico where I taught them river and estuary fisheries and ecology sampling techniques, including sampling fishes with backpack and boat electrofishers, gill nets, seines, and plankton nets, fish tagging, diet analysis, and habitat and water quality measurement techniques. The DDCSP students’ experiences included participation in my research as well as associated independent research projects. Following the field component of the DDCSP, I worked with all students to analyze data and prepare posters that they presented at the Ecological Society of America conference.