Writing & Side Projects

Writing and Side Projects

I have a number of interests outside of my direct research questions of ecology, evolution, and biology in general. For a number of years prior to entering academia, I created blogs to express my written creativity in different subject areas. More importantly, these were online venues where I could write bad jokes and no one would care!

In a previous life (read: my 20’s), I studied the social sciences and worked briefly in public policy and my writing at that time influenced the creation of a blog called “What’s the Deal With…” where I wrote about current events from a historical perspective.

When I then transitioned in my career to K-12 education and science teaching, I started to write more directly about conservation, environmental science, and ecology and evolution. In this more extensive, academic focused blog, called the “New Paradigms”, you could see the breadcrumbs of some of the future questions I would consider in academia when I ultimately decided to switch careers in graduate school.

More recently I’ve turned to non-2010’s internet media:

• During my middle school teaching years, I created youtube lesson shorts: bite-size laboratory sessions for my students to access hands-on science activities during the remote and hybrid teaching craziness of the COVID-19 pandemic.

• During my PhD, I co-created a podcast with my colleague Ryan Wagner (an excellent nature photographer and writer) to interview the seminar speakers that present their research at WSU-Vancouver. Our goal here was to broadcast out the more personal nature of each scientist, their journey and work, and provide a medium for connecting them to folks who were not able to speak 1 on 1 with them.