Michael Britton is a biologist and educator who uses ecology and physiology to understand mechanisms of evolution, population dynamics, and conservation. His work primarily focuses on amphibians and reptiles, but past work has also included ferns, insects, trees, mammals, and birds. Many of his investigations use physiological measurements and mechanisms to understand evolutionary processes and ecological interactions with applications for conservation and management decisions. Most of his work has been completed in tropical ecosystems in the Neotropics including Peru, Costa Rica, and Panama. His teaching includes a variety of introductory and upper-level courses in biology, ecology, and conservation, as well as a variety of field and research-based courses throughout the Americas.

I am the Director of Outreach and Strategic Engagement with the BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium. I have over 25 years of experience teaching introductory biology, ecology, and evolution courses. I'm also on the leadership team of the QUBES project and I spend a lot of my time thinking about how to bring new teaching and learning resources into classrooms.

 

I am an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and teach in the Biotechnology Program (BIT, biotech.ncsu.edu) at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC. My research interests include molecular microbiology, metagenomics, high-throughput discovery, epidemiology, history of disease, science education, and outreach activities. I am also interested in teaching with technology and the scholarship of teaching and learning.

See what students in the courses I teach do by visiting: go.ncsu.edu/htd ==> High-throughput Discovery course go.ncsu.edu/bitmetagenomics ==> Metagenomics course go.ncsu.edu/yme ==> Yeast Metabolic Engineering course go.ncsu.edu/delftia ==> Undergraduate Research and Open Science work go.ncsu.edu/bits ==> new course we are developing on Biotechnology and Sustainability (spring 2022) Learn more about me at: ccgoller.com

As the Director of the www.learngala.com platform, Hardin collaborates with communities of educators to facilitate coproduction, review, revision, implementation and evaluation of learning modules on that platform, and to enhance its interoperability with platforms like QUBES. An environmental and educational anthropologist by training, she also serves as Director for Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion for the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability.

Web Developer for QUBES. Creating spaces that are functional and easy to use for our members and partners. QUBES is constantly working on development items to bring resources, ideas, and communities together.

I was born in New York City a long time ago (the human population was 2.8 billion back then). Like some of you, I did not know what I wanted to do with my life, so I tried a lot of things. I worked in the social justice movement with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers for six years, then I pursued a career in musical theater in NYC and Colorado for another six years, and I finally landed on the field of animal behavior while doing my undergraduate work at CU Boulder. I obtained a B.A. in Environmental, Population, and Organismic Biology (EPOB) at CU Boulder under my mentors Chuck Southwick and Marc Bekoff, and while there did research on mule deer for my Honors project starting in 1985 -- so I've been doing animal behavior research for 37 years! During that time I was privileged to be a research assistant for Joel Berger studying bison at Badlands National Park. My graduate training was at UC Davis in the Animal Behavior Graduate Group under Ben Hart and a number of famous animal behaviorists (e.g., Peter Marler, Dale Lott, Tim Caro, Sarah Hrdy, Bill Mason). I did my Ph.D. dissertation research in southern Africa in Zimbabwe studying parasite-defense grooming in impala and testing the 'programmed grooming model', followed by post-docs on the same topic in different species in South Africa, Namibia, Canada, and California. Over the past two decades I have done my research in the summer months with teams of advanced undergraduates and the occasional graduate student from another university. We have studied desert bighorn sheep (New Mexico), plains bison (Nebraska), and Neotropical mammals like jaguar, puma, and tapir (Costa Rica). Our 12 year study of bison was supported by the National Science Foundation, and we have now completed 12 years of field research in Costa Rica supported by San Diego Zoo Global and PLNU. In Costa Rica, we study large, elusive mammals with camera trap surveys and scent detection dogs, with a special interest in predators and their prey in the cloud forests of the Talamanca Cordillera. My team and I have published on a variety of topics relevant to animal behavior and conservation, including parasite defense, sexual segregation, behavioral endocrinology, sexual selection, acoustical communication, predator-prey interactions, circadian and lunar activity patterns, and road ecology. I teach courses in Conservation Ecology, Neotropical Ecology & Mammalogy, Ecology & Conservation, Animal Behavior, Vertebrate Biology, as well as Environmental & People. In the past, I also taught Animal Biology, Human Biology and Bioethics, and Anatomy & Physiology. Over the past 25 years, I have mentored over 50 advanced undergraduates for summer research, many of whom were co-authors on publications. I have been heavily involved in promoting sustainability and creation care on our campus, I help coordinate the Environmental Science program, advise the Environmental Studies program, and am the campus representative for the Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies. On a more personal note, I was raised in a quaint Presbyterian Church in New York but wandered from the faith for many years before encountering Jesus while in Zimbabwe. I met my wife in Zim and we were married in 1994 and spent our first year of married life in South Africa during the first year of Nelson Mandela's presidency. My wife Emma was born in Zambia and grew up in Zimbabwe with a year in U.K. She is a talented wildlife artist and writer, and a wonderful mother. We have two children -- our daughter did a Master's in public policy and lives in Germany, and our son was the first graduate of the Environmental Studies program. Other than teaching and research, I enjoy nature and sports photography, reading, and hiking rugged mountains in Costa Rica.

I am an ecosystems ecologist whose research addresses the effects of plant traits on ecosystem processes. I use field and lab-based studies in conjunction with simulation modeling to explore complex interactions and to address ‘what-if’ questions regarding the effects of management and climate change on ecosystem processes in tropical forests and Midwestern U.S.agricultural systems. I translate research results into user-friendly, hands-on, interactive educational modeling tools. My studies are designed to provide insight into the mechanisms by which ecosystem management, and its improvements, have consequences from local to global scales.