Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

About Your Instructor

I love teaching at PCC and teach Principles of Biology, Botany, Introduction to Sustainability, Environmental Studies from a Biological Perspective, and General Biology. As a honeybee ecologist, my loves are being outside with flowers and insects! I have studied honeybee learning and memory, lizard interactions, and more! I have volunteered with Adventure Scientists surveying for pine martens on the Olympic Peninsula, creating DNA databases for big leaf maples and western red cedars to prevent poaching, and many other projects. I love PNW organisms and have worked for the forest service at Mt Adams. Currently, I am focused on changing curricula and pedagogy in biology to be more inclusive (gender, culture, ethnic, age, etc.) so please help me see places that need work! 

Hope to meet you!

Textbooks

The required textbooks for BI 202 at all PCC campuses are Stern's Introductory Plant Biology, 15th edition by Bidlack et al. published by McGraw Hill (previous editions 14 or 13 are fine for this textbook) and the Handbook of Northwestern Plants Revised Edition by Dennis and Gilkey published by Oregon State University Press (do not get editions from the previous millennium). You may also want a small notebook, hand lens, and/or camera.

Be prepared to go outside and to walk and interact with plants and your classmates!

For the Stern textbook, you can choose from previous editions (try not to go back more than an edition or two at most) and there are ebook, rental books, and "to keep" book versions, but keep in mind that Gloekler and Lucas (2021) show that many students prefer hard copy texts for learning over e-texts despite cost differences and Clinton (2019) has shown that reading from paper may be more efficient.

Literature Cited

Clinton, V. (2019). Reading from paper compared to screens: A systematic review and meta‐analysis. Journal of Research in Reading, 42(2), 288–325. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9817.12269

Gloekler, L. A., & Lucas, D. (2021). Nursing Students’ Preferences in Test-taking, E-Books, and Learning Styles: A Longitudinal Study. International Journal of Nursing Education, 13(1), 152–159. 10.37506/ijone.v13i1.13333

Botany will meet in-person for lecture and laboratory and I hope to have 3 field trips (to the Hoyt Arboretum, to Camassia Nature Preserve, and to Tryon Creek State Natural area) during 3 of our laboratory periods (dependent on students being able to arrange transportation and other accessibility needs).