I am an assistant professor of life science education in the School of Natural Resources. As a life sciences education researcher, I focus on how undergraduate students learn biology. My research broadly rests at the intersection of biology (genetics, ecology, and evolution), education and cognitive psychology. At UNL, my work focuses on how students learn to organize biological concepts using systems thinking. I have two research themes: biological models and reasoning across biological scales. My work is meant to transform the ways we teach biology at the university and I work with instructors at introductory through upper division to develop methods that align with the ways students are able to learn biology in their classroom. My biology education research is grounded in my background in ecology. My graduate research at Penn State University was on long-distance seed dispersal of herbicide-resistant weeds in agricultural systems. I continued research on invasive species population dynamics at Oregon State University. I also completed postdoctoral research at Michigan State University studying model construction in undergraduate biology.