This is my sixteenth year at Briar Cliff. Most Biology majors will get to know me during Biological Principles and in Botany. I also teach an introductory course in Environmental Science Some non-majors, especially those in Psychology and Elementary Education, will take Biological Principles. Biology majors may also elect to take Ecology and/or Field Botany with me. Among my IRs are Prairie Ecology, Economic Botany, Conservation Biology, Subtropical Ecology, and Desert Ecology.
In addition to my regular teaching duties , I have directed student projects and internships. During the 1994-95 academic year, Angel Bennier databased the college's herbarium. Brad Shattuck completed a Natural Resources Management internship based upon his 1995 summer experiences as an Anna Beal intern with the Iowa Nature Conservancy. During the following summer Sunday (Watson) Ford completed internships based on her work at Loess Ridge Nature Center and a nature program for elementary students.
As a botanist, I believe it is very important to be familiar with the local flora. During the two years which I taught in Virginia before coming to Briar Cliff, I studied the flora of the Thunder Ridge Wilderness and James River Face Wilderness areas in the Blue Ridge. Among my present research interests is documenting the flora of the Sioux City Prairie, a Nature Conservancy Preserve adjacent to the Briar Cliff Campus. During the summers I have led public field trips through this 150-acre tract. One recently completed project was a roadside vegetation inventory of county roads here in Woodbury County. New research projects include examining the floras of Broken Kettle Grasslands, a Nature Conservancy tract in Plymouth County, and the Adams Homestead and Nature Preserve, a recent addition to South Dakota's State Park system. In November 1997, I was awarded a Missouri River Historical Development grant to facilitate research at the Adams Preserve and upgrade herbarium facilities there and at Briar Cliff. (See Cliff News 12/18/97 p.4 for details.) In 2000, I initiated a study of the flora of Stone State Park, funded by the Iowa Dept. of Natural Resources.
I earned my Ph.D. in Botany through the University of Michigan. My dissertation centered on the floras of four islands (South Manitou, North Manitou, South Fox, North Fox) in Lake Michigan and part of the mainland portion of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Among my recent publications is a flora of the Fox Islands. For my Masters work, completed through Michigan State University, I surveyed the flora of the then proposed Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness Area along Lake Michigan. My undergraduate years were spent at Houghton College in rural western New York.
One of my goals is to become familiar with the biomes of
North America, so during the summer I try to take extended camping trips to
explore new areas. During the past summer ('07), I explored forests of the
southern Appalachian highlands in WV, VA, NC, and TN.
The
summer of 2004 was filled with activity. In June I took a three-week
botanical collecting trip with Hector Serna (BC '04) to the Rocky Mountains and
lower Columbia Basin in search of plants collected during the Lewis and Clark
Expedition (1804-1806). In late July/early August I spent a week wandering
the northern Great Plains with the same goal. This project was funded by
the Sioux City Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center as part of its
Garden of Discovery.
During
the summer of 2003, I made my first trip to Alaska. I toured the interior
(including a trip to Denali National Park) and spent a week taking two
Chautauqua Short Courses (Ecology of South-Central Alaska and Glaciers
of Alaska). During Glaciers we viewed Portage Glacier,
Matanuska Glacier [at the left], plus College and Harriman fjords. Later
in the summer, my wife and I visited the Appalachian Highlands including stops
at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and Shenandoah
National Park.
Previous summer trips have included the Great Smoky Mountains and the Blue Ridge Parkway, New England and the Maine coast, the Minnesota north woods, the Niobrara River and Nebraska Sand Hills, the Ozark and Ouachita mountains of Arkansas, the arctic tundra (Churchill, Manitoba), the Chihuahuan, Mojave, Sonoran, and Great Basin deserts, the Sierra Nevada range (including Lake Tahoe and Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Yosemite National Parks), the coast redwoods, the Cascades, the Olympic Peninsula, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, Rocky Mountain National Park, and the Grand Canyon. I've even headed south to explore a Mexican cloud forest. Hundreds of slides taken on these trips have appeared in my class lectures.
In early September 2000, I led an all-day workshop, Discovering the Prairie in Your Own Backyard, for local elementary teachers. This experiential learning session, which included field trips to area prairies, was made possible by a grant awarded to Briar Cliff by IBP. This year eighteen teachers from sixteen different schools attended. This workshop, first offered in 1997, was initially funded by the Andrea and Norman Waitt, Jr. Foundation. During July 2000, I attended the 17th North American Prairie Conference and presented a paper about this workshop. The paper (co-authored with local teacher Jo Yeager) appeared in the Conference Proceedings (2001) pp. 225-227.
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