Teaching

  • Data Science Skills Series Instructor at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (Summer 2025)
    • Developed and co-led a series of six data science training workshops for the SERC community, with topics including Git/GitHub, spatial data analysis, and advanced data visualization.
  • Advanced R Programming Co-instructor of record at Virginia Tech (Spring 2023)
    • Designed and taught a graduate seminar on advanced programming in R (13 students).
    • Materials and syllabus are available in an open-source GitHub repository.
  • Principles of Biology Laboratory Teaching Assistant at Virginia Tech (Spring 2022)
    • Taught three lab sections with 7–24 students each.
  • Ecology for Non-Majors Teaching Assistant at Pomona College (Fall 2018)
  • Introduction to Ecology and Evolution Writing Mentor at Pomona College (Spring 2018)
    • Led individualized mentor sessions to help undergraduate students develop skills in scientific writing
  • Bilingual (Spanish and English) kindergarten Volunteer Teaching Assistant at Mountain View Elementary School (Spring 2018)
  • Rooftop Garden Project Mentor at Pomona College (Spring 2018)
    • Developed programing for biweekly workshops on earth science and environmental justice for local high school students

Outreach

National Parks Marsh Restoration

I worked with the National Park Service to create a set of communications materials about coastal marsh restoration, including visitor center display boards and digital StoryMaps. This work was done through a science communication fellowship from the Ecological Society of America.

Flipped Science Fair

In our flipped science fair, we gave kids the power to judge graduate student science fair posters. Kids interacted with 27 graduate student presenters in small group settings, and they had the opportunity to see themselves as valued contributors in science. Meanwhile, graduate students had got training and feedback in science communication. We published a paper about the first year of this project here.

Stream box

When the COVID-19 pandemic cancelled all in-person science outreach, I worked the New River Land Trust and the Virginia Tech Stream Team to put together a “Stream Box” filled with information and activities that families could use to independently learn about a local stream. The Global Change Center wrote an article about this work here.

GirlsLaunch!

GirlsLaunch! is a program at Virginia Tech that aims to combat gender biases by exposing kindergarten-aged children to female scientists. With funding from the Virginia Tech Center for Communicating Science, I developed a video and interactive worksheet activity for the GirlsLaunch! program.

Envirobites

Envirobites works to make environmental research accessible to non-experts. I have written many articles for the site, each of which takes a specific paper and breaks down the key findings.