Teaching · mentorship · scientific capacity building
I teach science as a way of thinking: asking tractable questions, making predictions, evaluating evidence, distinguishing among competing explanations, and communicating conclusions clearly. Across courses and mentorship, I progressively shift responsibility toward students so that they move from understanding scientific ideas to using them independently.
How I teach
My course design starts from the intellectual work I want students to be able to do. Concepts provide the foundation, but the goal is application: students use evidence, evaluate explanations, and eventually construct questions and arguments of their own.
I build activities around explicit predictions and the evidence that would support, weaken, or distinguish among explanations. This shifts attention from memorizing the “right” answer to asking how we know what we know.
Early tasks make the reasoning visible and structured. Later tasks ask students to choose questions, evaluate methods, interpret results, use primary literature, and revise work in response to feedback.
I use written preparation, small-group work, discussion, visual interpretation, data analysis, field observation, and low-stakes practice so participation does not depend on a single mode of communication or prior confidence.
Students move from conceptual foundations toward the higher-order work of scientific analysis, evaluation, and creation.
Selected teaching materials
These materials come from courses I have taught. Together they show how I structure a semester, use a single case to make scientific reasoning explicit, and integrate field, laboratory, quantitative, and discussion-based work within an ecology course.
A course-design overview from Scientific Thinking at the American University in Cairo, showing the progression from skepticism and hypothesis formation to research validity, literature evaluation, and an iterative final project.
A classroom case I use in Scientific Thinking. Students turn a surprising claim into competing explanations, predict discriminating tests, interpret the results, and decide what the evidence supports.
A shortened version of the Conservation Biology & Sustainable Development syllabus I used at Baruch College, retaining the course structure, assignments, grading, and representative field and quantitative activities.
Mentorship in practice
Mentorship can begin in a classroom, a graduate project, an early-career training programme, or a field collaboration. Across those settings, I try to expand the decisions a mentee can make and the scientific products they can claim as their own.
Joshua presenting the results of his ARTEMIS research project at the programme's final symposium. Through ARTEMIS, I mentor early-career African researchers as they develop projects, strengthen research skills, and communicate their work to a scientific audience.
Victoria O'Connor conducting cognition research during her graduate project. I mentored the work from experimental design through analysis and publication; the project became a peer-reviewed paper and part of her progression into doctoral research.
Trevor Balone collecting field data during long-term lion research in Botswana. Our collaboration has expanded from field data collection toward scientific presentation, professional certification, authorship, and postgraduate training.
Student research outcomes
Entered the comparative lion programme through an internship, contributed to the 2026 Animal Behaviour paper Beyond the Serengeti Lion, and now leads first-author research.
Combined tracker reconstructions and biologging to investigate fine-scale lion hunting behavior and earned the highest thesis grade in her cohort.
Developed independent projects using lion datasets to examine habitat effects, abiotic drivers of behavior, and territorial dynamics.
Developed experimental research on cognition and behavioral flexibility in captive carnivores, presented the work, published it, and continued into doctoral research.
Scientific capacity building
I also work to broaden who participates in producing scientific knowledge. This includes mentoring early-career researchers, recognizing field expertise as scientific expertise, and supporting routes toward authorship, professional training, and postgraduate research.
In Botswana, San trackers reconstruct behavioral sequences from spoor that cannot be recovered from telemetry or direct observation alone. Their expertise changes what questions can be answered, and collaborators are recognized through scientific authorship where appropriate.
Through the Max Planck ARTEMIS programme, I mentor early-career African researchers as they develop research projects, strengthen analytical and communication skills, and build independent scientific trajectories.
Teaching experience
My teaching experience spans majors and non-majors courses, lecture and laboratory settings, scientific reasoning, ecology, evolution, and animal behavior.