Teaching Resources

As part of the Resources for Inclusive Evolution Education Group, I co-wrote a module on genetic drift with Xan Chacko, Nancy Chen, Zachary Dietz, Madeline Eppley, & Suegene Noh. This teaching module is designed to help undergraduate students dismantle preconceived notions about evolution and deepen their understanding of genetic drift as a non-deterministic evolutionary process. We present activities, lecture slides, and resources to help students build intuition on the contribution of randomness and stochasticity in evolution, and dislodge and further prevent misguided beliefs in genetic determinism and essentialism. Our hands-on activities include those that engage with the scientific literature, computer simulations, Queer theory, and poetry. The major learning objectives of this module are for students to be able to describe the role of randomness and stochasticity in evolution, and to ultimately argue that genetic drift is always acting in biological populations. You can access the entire lesson here.

Joanna Moles (Biology, Fordham '21) and I cowrote this TedEd video lesson about pigeons and their worldwide distribution. This video was directed by Joseph Clark of Oh Studio. 

©Natalie Keyssar for The New York Times

Shannon Doyne and Michael Gonchar at the The New York Times developed a lesson based on the first chapter of my dissertation research. You can find that lesson here.

Laura Baratta of WashU's Medical Scientist Training Program and I created this coloring sheet of the squirrels of Missouri. You can download the sheet here.

header photograph ©RJ via Flickr