Future Research Directions

One of the foremost goals of my research program is to go into undergraduate classrooms and assess students' Earth systems thinking abilities. I am particularly interested in studying interdisciplinary courses such as historical geology, paleobiology, planetary science, astrobiology, geochemistry, oceanography, and geomorphology to understand their potential for developing systems thinking skills.  I am also interested in pairing classroom observational instruments (COPUS, RTOPS) with systems thinking assessments to understand the relationship between active learning and the development of systems thinking skills.

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I hope to further my work on biogeoscience education by working to develop learning progressions for biogeochemistry in various contexts including introductory geology and biology courses, Earth history, astrobiology, environmental health, and planetary science.

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I am also interested in exploring undergraduate student perceptions of mass extinction events and issues of environmental health/ medical geology to understand how students apply systems thinking to complex events and human systems respectively.  

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Finally, I hope to use my quantitative and statistical skills to continue to collaborate with colleagues who are working on large datasets-- such as the geoscience faculty survey-- to continue to better understand the current state of undergraduate geoscience teaching.