Prospective Students

Undergraduates

I welcome undergraduate participation in the lab, in the context either of a research assistantship or a directed study project. Typically, I meet regularly with directed study students to read and discuss papers from the primary literature, and then plan an experimental project. To date, students have worked on questions examining selection on floral morphologies, the relationship of circadian rhythm and fitness, and multilevel selection. A second semester of directed study may be taken as a writing intensive course and used to both complete statistical analyses as well as explore the students' results in the context of the greater evolutionary and/or developmental literature.

Graduate Students

For me to effectively advise a student, I expect that she or he will work in a field related to my own research interests. However, the ultimate Masters or Dissertation project should be independent of my own work, because future success as a researcher will depend on the ability to independently identify the current boundaries of knowledge and develop questions that significantly advance those boundaries.

While rotating in the lab in the first year, graduate students may carry out either a directed reading or experimental project, or some combination of those two. Directed readings provide the opportunity to explore a given literature in depth, and may be especially appropriate if students already have well-developed interests. Participation in an ongoing project in the lab has the advantage of introducing students to the type of work we do daily in my lab, and providing a chance to develop potential Masters or Dissertation research questions based on these early observations.

Students potentially interested in graduate school should feel free to contact me directly by phone or email.