Teaching

Wildlife Conservation History and Law – WILD 2050

This class covers the development of management and conservation laws in North America, using examples from wildlife. The primary focus concerns how the field of wildlife management developed from market hunters, to sportsmen, to modern laws and policies. See here for some student projects featuring course themes.

Developing Agent-based Models – WILD 7440

This course is designed to help graduate students become more skilled in using R for data manipulation and management tasks, while simultaneously producing work that could be applied to their research products. It is primarily a skills-based course, where the majority of class efforts are focused on building model-based knowledge and interacting with tools to help model building work more effectively and efficiently. Over the course of the semester, students build and test models. See here for some student work featuring the progress made during this class.

Conservation Genetics – WILD 3430

This course helps students bring conservation genetics themes, a critical discipline in the management and restoration of biodiversity, to the toolset ensuring that species not only survive but thrive in their natural habitats. The major focus of the Conservation Genetics (WILD 3430) class is understanding how to use genetic data to manage populations, and students practiced this skill by considering bison population history and management. Published here is some student work on this topic.

Conservation Genetics – WILD 7430

This is an advanced course on conservation genetics for graduate students. The primary focus is concerns reading and evaluating primary literature, with particular emphasis on works published in the last 3 years (or less). We also consider how to bring these concepts to stakeholders that are not familiar with genetics; see here for some of these efforts by past graduate students.