Research

Institutional Research (IR)

Most recently, my passion to help create a continuous improvement cycle in higher education has led me to Institutional Research. Throughout this aspect of my research I coordinate with IT staff and database services both within our institution and more broadly across national datasets to evaluate effects of interventions on student success and retention. I can also mine the data to inform administrative and committee planning and decision-making. These efforts broadly impact improvements and data-driven decision-making at MSU and SU and are highly rewarding for me. It also aligns well in terms of my efforts in programmatic assessment and evaluation.

Discipline-based Biology Education Research (DBER)

When I decided to pursue my Ph.D. I knew it was to become a professor in higher-level education. I had the unique opportunity to be a teaching assistant at my liberal arts public honors college at St. Mary's College of Maryland and I found my new direction...teaching. Although my time at St. Mary's was filled with inquiry-based and student-centered learning, I knew that I had a lot to learn about becoming a great instructor. I went to the Plant Biology Department of UGA for my Ph.D. because it is extremely supportive of teaching as well as pedagogical research and curriculum development. I have worked with numerous professors and learning communities on campus to increase my expertise in pedagogy and student-learning techniques.

As my first Postdoctoral Scholar position at Michigan State University I researched scientific reasoning and quantitative literacy, based on MSU's Undergraduate Learning Goals, of undergraduate students throughout their college education at MSU as well as professional development of biology postdoctoral scholars in Faculty Institutes for Reforming Science Teaching (FIRST IV) with Dr. Diane Ebert-May. I continue to collaborate in the assessment and evaluation of both aspects of these projects and their integration to improve the professional development of future faculty ultimately leading to improved student learning in undergraduate biology courses across the nation.

This led to me my current position as a Research Associate and then Assistant Professor in the Center for Integrative Studies in General Science (CISGS) at MSU collaborating with Drs. Julie Libarkin, Gabriel Ording, and Stephen Thomas. We are assessing the effectiveness of the Center, its courses, and labs both quantitatively and qualitatively via student learning and faculty surveys. During this I am very lucky to collaborate with the GeoCognition Research Lab at MSU to develop assessment tools and strategies. Current research on undergraduate conceptual understanding and perceptions of general science courses are highly illuminating and will be published to the broader community. This work has also informed and provided the scaffolding of broader assessment of the Centers of Integrative Studies' (Arts & Humanities, General Science, and Social Science) general education curricula at MSU.

I am also currently researching the implementation of the Biology Initiative at MSU with Drs. Cori Fata-Hartley and Becky Matz. I am focused on using institutional research, faculty development, and development of shared vision for improved biology education at MSU. Specifically, we are working to create a coherent curriculum and administrative model to span biology-related degree-granting departments and programs at MSU as well as assessments to evaluate their efficacy.

In my future research I plan to incorporate design and assessment techniques of discipline-based education research to evaluate and improve teaching and learning for undergraduates. I will use my specialized biology and DBER backgrounds to engage students in authentic research. I would also like to use my programmatic assessment knowledge and experience to inform and assist interested faculty colleagues in creating effective learning environments. The results would inform professors how to structure their courses and administrators how to make evidence-based decisions to give undergraduate students the best opportunities for success.

Previous Laboratory and Field Work

In general, I was interested in protistan systematics using evidence from morphological, molecular, and genomic data. During my undergraduate research at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) with Dr. Wayne Coats I fell in love with the dinoflagellates, especially Amoebophrya spp., which parasitizes other dinoflagellates and might actually be a missing link between the dinoflagellates and the apicomplexan lineages. During graduate school I was funded by the NSF grant entitled Partnerships for Enhancing Expertise in Taxonomy (PEET) on the Euglenoid Project with Dr. Mark Farmer as my mentor. My research involved developing new molecular markers for Euglena gracilis and its close photosynthetic relatives in the Euglenida. I am broadly trained in all protistan supergroups and I spent most of my graduate research elucidating the history of the gene elongation factor 1 alpha (EF1⍺) within the eukaryotes, specifically the euglenids. Below are some of the specific details on studies and findings from my graduate research.

EF1⍺ has had a complicated and somewhat unclear evolutionary history; however, it still remains a useful tool in the reconstruction of organismal phylogeny at varying levels in eukaryotic species. I have explored the relationship between EF1⍺ and a seemingly-related protein, elongation factor-like (EFL), that sometimes is found to have replaced the function of EF1⍺. I uncovered evidence that EF1⍺ and EFL are ancient paralogs, possibly of the archaeal version of EF1⍺, that have also undergone more recent events of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in certain eukaryotic lineages.

The Euglenozoa (Excavata) has three main lineages; Kinetoplastida, Euglenida and Diplonemea. Although the diplonemids seem to have completely lost EF1⍺, I was able to reveal the phylogenetic relationships between the remaining lineages as well as determine the sister group to the euglenozoans with EF1⍺ and small subunit ribosomal RNA (18S). The discicristates clade was supported with the Heterolobosea found as sister to the Euglenozoa that retain EF1⍺. The recently described Discoba clade was also supported with the Jakobida recovered as sister to the discicristates.

I also further analyzed the Euglenida lineage with EF1⍺, 18S and large subunit ribosomal RNA (28S) to recover supported clades. There will be more information described from this study after it is published. Overall, EF1⍺ is still useful in phylogenetic reconstruction since it is such a conserved gene, but the study and understanding of the gene within the context of the lineage to be studied must be determined prior to analyses.