Hello! I am a doctoral candidate in conservation biology and have been involved in education for over 10 years. For the past 4.5 years, I have taught Introductory Biology labs at UCF. I have also taught Comparative Physiology and will be teaching Vertebrate Anatomy Lab this semester. Before I went back to school, I taught Human Nutrition at Polk Community College and Biology and Anatomy & Physiology at Apopka High School. Before my formal classroom experience, I was an animal keeper and gave educational talks every day on conservation and zoology.
My B.A. (in Biology) comes from Swarthmore College, a small but very competitive liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. My M.S. is in Environmental and Forest Biology and is from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, in upstate New York. As I mentioned above, I am working on my Ph.D. in conservation biology at UCF.
I love to teach all areas of biology and do my best to make it meaningful to each student's life. Because biology is the study of living things, I feel that it's relevant to us every day, whether we're focusing on our health, our garden, our environment, or the food we eat. I believe that I am a fairly relaxed and friendly teacher, but I do expect my students to take some responsibility to learn the material I am presenting. I'm aware that not all people learn in the same manner, so I do my best to find out what works well for the individual student. I have never specifically worked as a tutor before, but in my years at UCF, I have worked one-on-one with numerous students to help them master the material in the labs that I teach.
I look forward to tutoring students and hopefully sharing some of my enthusiasm for biology!