Graduate student Madison Nelson and undergraduate researcher Darrien Caudle were awarded a fellowship from the Equity & Diversity in Undergraduate STEM (EDU-STEM) network fellowship to investigate whether an intervention to promote representation of scientists in STEM classrooms can improve relatability to scientists and stereotypes about who can be a scientist. We are super excited to get to work on this project!!

New paper out in Ecology, led by Peter Wilfahrt & Ashley Asmus looking at spatial and temporal rarity as predictors for extinction risks in grassland ecosystems world-wide. For the full paper, check the link here.

Madison Nelson will be presenting some of her Masters Work at the upcoming Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research (SABER) conference on Friday July 23rd!. See her poster below!

We got official word from NSF that we are being funded to start a project to explicitly incorporate Ideologically aware pedagogies into introductory biology classrooms. This project will be done in collaboration with Cissy Ballen, Abby Beatty, & Kimberly Mulligan-Guy at Auburn University, and Sheritta Fagbodun at Tuskegee University. We will be working to create 12 modules that will be publicly available and South Alabama, Tuskegee, Auburn, & Auburn Montgomery will provide initial beta testing for our modules. I am super excited to work with all of our instructors to implement these resources!

J just finished up teaching Marine Botany at the sea lab. The first time back in-person in over a year, it was great to get out in the field with students and get some hands-on learning with students that were excited to be working at the sea lab! 

Nutrient addition consistently increases pathogen abundance and reduces arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in grasslands globally. Recent work by Ylva Lekberg, Carlos Arnillas, and others came out in Nature Communications this week! Click here to read the full article.

Incoming SGA Secretary and Henning lab member Maggie Braun was highlighted on the Biology Department website! See the article here! 

Maggie will be joining a STEM-packed Student Government for the 2021-2022 academic year with Henning lab researcher Grace Sekaya as the President!

Watched four amazing undergrads walk across the stage today and graduate!!  The FUNGGii lab is losing 4 fantastic students, however we are super excited to see what comes next!! Carolien is heading to Wake Forest to start a MS in sustainability, Emma is heading to San Diego to work with sea lions, Leslie & Chelsea are finishing a couple of courses at the Sea Lab and then venturing beyond!!

New Paper out today in Ecosphere! Check out this paper lead by Case Prager on some work out of Rocky Mountain Biology Laboratory!

This week, J was awarded the 2021 Arts and Sciences Teaching Excellence award. More coming soon, but J appreciates all the students, peers that nominate him, and the administration for providing him the award!!