In 2002, author Robin D.G. Kelley published the book "Freedom Dreams," examining the efforts of various social movements across the African Diaspora. In this text, Dr. Kelley posed the questions:

“How do we produce a vision that enables us to see beyond our immediate ordeals?”
“How do we transcend bitterness and cynicism and embrace love, hope, and an all-encompassing dream of freedom, especially in these rough times?”

As educators, we expand the reach of our classrooms when we create inclusive and welcoming environments that invite students to apply their learning in novel ways. Our evidence-based teaching strategies allow students to scaffold their learning and see deep connections between different organizational levels and subfields of biology. Not only do we strive to create meaningful learning experiences within the classroom, but our scholarship and service shape our students’ broader educational experiences.

From our oceans to savannas, animals must cope with dynamic environments that are undergoing unprecedented rates of change. How do animals make decisions in the face of such environmental changes, and what are the consequences of those decisions for individuals, populations, ecological communities, and—importantly—interactions with people? Examining these linkages is important for gaining mechanistic insight into how and why animal communities will be affected by global change, and for targeting effective conservation strategies.

Our Behavioral Ecophysics lab focuses on the study of organismal mechanisms (e.g., physiology, biomechanics) in light of biotic and abiotic interactions, with the goal of establishing explicit links between physical laws and rules of life, from individual to ecological scales. A central challenge of biological studies is to describe functional links between underlying architecture (e.g., genotype, phenotype) and emergent phenomena (e.g., performance, ecological patterns).