Teaching Quantitative Biology Online

Rachel Hartnett

• Extended Profile

  View extended profile
• Organization

  Mount St. Mary's University
• Website

  http://www.rnhartnett.net/
• Telephone

  (not set)
• ORCID

  0000-0003-1743-4430
• Interests

  1. biostatistics
  2. data analysis
  3. ecology
  4. Management Of Data
  5. quantitative skills
  6. Swirl
  7. swirlify
• Biography

  I have been an Assistant Professor in Environmental Science at Mount St. Mary's University since the fall of 2021. Previously, I was a CAS Diversity Post Doctoral Fellow in the Integrative Biology Department of Oklahoma State University from 2018-2021. I worked within small OK reservoirs, collecting water quality data and measuring the phyto and zooplankton communities in order to better quantify seasonal turnover in old and young reservoirs. I received a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology under the direction of Dr. Lawrence J. Weider at the University of Oklahoma. My working thesis involved using theory and experimentation to better understand how population structure influences community properties and stability. I am using Daphnia as a model organism, linking their life-history traits to communities through size-distributions.

  
  
  

  I joined QUBES in 2019 because I am passionate about integrating experimental design and analysis (and the coding skills that go with it) into course curricula and undergraduate research experiences. I've grown very fond of using Swirl with R as a self-paced tool to ease coding anxiety and to scaffold analyses in course materials.

  
  
  

  In a resting egg (aka aquatic nutshell), I get excited over equations and graphs, while trying to keep myself grounded in real systems.