Talks and teaching videos
Below you will find some example of public speaking. I have given presentations at big scientific conferences from the Ecological Society of America (ESA) 100th anniversary in 2015 to the Society for Freshwater Science in 2017 to the Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology (SICB) in 2019. Additionally, I’ve also talked at more specialized scientific venues such as the International Association of Astacology (IAA) at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 2017. Finally, I’ve also given several public presentations for the general public varying in length from lightening talk (three minutes) to 3MT-like teaching talks (five minutes, Grad Teach Live at UK) to full hour talks at breweries (Science series in Lexington).
If you are interested in having me talk at your association, university, college, etc., please contact me via the contact form on top of this website.
Grad Teach Live!
I like this talk because it gives the audience the essence of my teaching philosophy in a nutshell.
Similar in nature to the 3MT competition (see below), this competition was put together by the University of Kentucky in 2019 for graduate students to showcase their teaching skills in this very difficult format (five minutes, three slides).
This talk was on the impact of limb loss and regeneration on crayfish burrowing behaviors (spoiler alert, it’s a big impact and it carries over to the entire ecosystem due to the crayfish importance.
The International Association of Astacology’s Twenty-second International Symposium on Freshwater Crayfish
This title is a mouthful; however, this talk is dear to my heart for two reasons. First, it was given when I met my scientific family (crayfish nerds, aka, astacologists). Second, it took place on the scene of the Carnegie Hall, yes, the one, as proved by the picture below!
Ecological Science at the Frontier: Celebrating ESA’s Centennial
The was my first big conference talk and it was a success, or so I was told! But seriously, it was very intimidating. Nonetheless, I’ve met a lot of very interesting people out there in Baltimore and it was a blast.
Three Minutes Thesis - 3MT
The Graduate School and the Graduate Student Congress (GSC) at the University of Kentucky organized the local 3MT competition and I decided to give it a shot. Although I didn’t win anything (you probably can tell when watching the talk), I’ve learn a lot and grew from the experience. So it was a win in my book!
Lightboard pre-class lesson example
This is an example of my active learning efforts. In the BIO 325 Honor Ecology course (I was the laboratory coordinator), students were asked to watch those 10 minutes videos prior to coming to lecture. This allowed us, the teaching team (my adviser at the time and I) to devise engaging ways for students to interact with the material in class rather than passively absorbing it during lecture (since they’ve already been exposed to the material via those videos).