Coursework Details

I have completed a mixture of online and in-person coursework, adequately preparing me for professional roles in a remote or in-person setting.

Print & Media Design | LSC 332

Learning Outcomes:

Recognize and explain the importance of planning and critiques in the design process.
Summarize and properly apply the principles of design.
Critique design they encounter outside of the classroom.
Develop and apply highly marketable software skills to a variety of print and electronic design projects.

Projects:

Redesign a poorly designed ad using the basic principles of design.
Create a label and logo for a fictional applesauce company.
Use different fonts and font sizes to create a quote graphic.
Create a logo, business card, and style guide for a fictional business of your choosing.
Design a resume, business card, and personal logo.
Design a magazine, including a masthead, cover, table of contents, 2 two-page spreads, and a back-page ad.

View design portfolio here.

Science Writing | LSC 212

Learning Outcomes:

Explain how writing well means listening to and engaging in conversation with others, and how this concept applies across scientific, professional, and public discourse, including social media.
Discern and analyze the existing arguments surrounding a science topic, and use these ideas to evaluate their own views and frame them in a compelling way.
Identify science-based information sources, apply successful search strategies, and evaluate the credibility and usefulness of different sources.
Describe the common barriers to effective science communication and apply practices for overcoming them.
Foster dialogue and community by participating thoughtfully and respectfully in online and in-person discussions, including peer reviews of each other’s work.

Social Media for the Sciences | LSC 432

Learning Outcomes:

Understand how to best communicate information via different social media platforms.
Use social media management tools, such as Hootsuite, to schedule posts and interact with followers.

Projects:

Create a personal social media strategy to accomplish a professional goal, including example posts for multiple social media platforms.

Web Design | LSC 532

Learning Outcomes:

Develop a fundamental understanding of how the web works and how humans interact with the web.
Learn to effectively communicate specialty areas of web design including usability, user-centered design, content marketing copywriting, persona creation.
Relate the knowledge and abilities gained from class to produce a complete website.

Projects:

Redesign of a website interface of your choosing, using Photoshop to lay out the initial design, and HTML and CSS to create a clickable interface.
Client project redesigning the website for the UW Arboretum, using Wix.
Creation of a personal website, using a platform of your choice.

Climate Change Ecology | Zoology 660

Learning Outcomes:

Gain a basic understanding of historic and future trends in climate change within an ecological context.
Identify the ecological and evolutionary impacts of climate change on natural communities and wildlife populations (including changes in phenology and ranges, community dynamics, and altered trophic interactions).
Gain experience in developing a climate change vulnerability assessment for a given species or community.

Projects:

Work in a group of three students to assess the vulnerability of a species of your choosing, including a written climate change vulnerability assessment compiling your findings, as well as a presentation to the class summarizing the main results of your analysis.

Climate Change Governance | Environmental Studies 349

Learning Outcomes:

Be aware of different initiatives used in addressing climate change at a range of scales and that draw upon a variety of conceptual frameworks.
Critically evaluate these initiatives, placing them into their social, political, economic, and cultural contexts.
Demonstrate skills in articulating understandings of these approaches, in both oral and written form.
Demonstrate enhanced confidence in making presentations to the class and contributing to class activities.
Think creatively in evaluating and designing climate change governance approaches.

Conservation Biology | Botany 651

Learning Outcomes:

Understand and apply ecological principles and human dimensions to the conservation of biological diversity.
Learn how conservation issues vary in different regions across the globe.
Understand how organizations and governments have approached conservation in the past and present.
Communicate about conservation issues to the general public.

Projects:

Brainstorm various ways you can have a positive impact on the planet, and create a blog documenting the challenge you choose to implement in your life.
Create an interactive activity for children at Saturday Science at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, focusing on small changes you can make in your everyday life for the benefit of the planet.

Environment, Natural Resources, and Society | C&E Soc 248

Learning Outcomes:

Learn concepts and general theories on basic social processes, especially those concerning relationships between society and the environment.
Understand how social science arguments are constructed and evaluated.
Develop critical thinking skills around social organization and social processes.
Develop written and oral communication skills for the social sciences.

Evolutionary Biology | Botany 410

Learning Outcomes:

Think like an evolutionist when pondering how new species arise, how individuals adapt, how species interact, how sexual systems evolve, how diseases evolve, and human origins.
Understand both macro- and micro-evolution, the nature of adaptation, units and levels of selection, how to recognize and measure selection, the evolution of quantitative traits and behavior, and how we now use evolutionary biology to conserve species and improve medicine.
Evaluate evidence and examine how modern scientists study evolution.

General Ecology | Botany 460

Learning Outcomes:

Understand the basis for the distribution and abundance of species.
Learn about interactions among species and how they determine the composition, dynamics, and diversity of communities.
Understand factors energy fixation and flows of energy and nutrients within ecosystems.
Analyze interactions among patches in landscapes.
Describe the ecological effects humans are having on individual species, communities, ecosystems, landscapes, and biosphere, and how negative effects might be avoided or ameliorated.

Projects:

As a group of 4 students, come up with an ecological research question, and write a meta-analysis paper describing research that has been done in that area, as well as prepare a presentation to share with the class.

Grassland Ecology | Botany 370

Learning Outcomes:

Develop the ability to describe, understand, and predict grassland phenomena from global to local perspectives.

Plant Systematics | Botany 400

Learning Outcomes:

Demonstrate knowledge about the basic patterns of land plant evolution through time
Identify the major groups of plants.
Become familiar with the Wisconsin flora by learning representative families and genera.
Learn skills of identifying plant species, using keys and manuals – for use anywhere in the world – and of collecting, pressing, and labeling plant species.
Engage in Citizen Science by becoming proficient in the use of iNaturalist.

Projects:

Collect, identify, press, and mount 4 flowering plants on herbarium paper.

Statistics | Statistics 371

Learning Outcomes:

Develop mastery of basic statistical concepts.
Develop the ability to apply these concepts correctly, especially in problems originating in the life sciences.
Learn to communicate effectively in writing the results of a statistical analysis to a non-statistical audience.
Proficiency in using the computer to carry out statistical analysis using the statistical package R.