I am a mammalogist and vertebrate community ecologist. I teach non-majors biology courses and courses for biology majors at both the undergraduate and graduate level. In addition to teaching, I am active in research and serve as major professor to graduate students as well as on committees for other graduate students. I am a Tennessee native, raised in rural southern middle Tennessee. I spent seven years as a faculty member in the biology department at Freed-Hardeman University in western TN. Immediately prior to coming to Tech, I spent a year as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology at Northern Michigan University in the city of Marquette in Michigan's remote Upper Peninsula. As a biologist, Tennessee (and the southeast) is an exciting area to work because of the great diversity of landforms. These different areas create unique habitats for characteristic assemblages of organisms, such that you can find very different biological communities in close proximity to each other. This also means that the biodiversity of the region is very high, so there are lots of organisms (and interactions) to study.