Bio

I was born in Ft. Knox, Kentucky, where my Dad was stationed in the army. He remained in the army my entire childhood- I'm an army brat. We moved every 3 years of my life or so, living in England, 3 different Army bases in Germany, and Ft. Bliss and Ft. Hood in Texas. My senior year of high school, we moved to Copperas Cove near Ft. Hood. As a child I was always interested in natural history and in particular animals. After graduation I attended Central Texas College in Killeen, then transferred to the University of Texas in Austin to pursue a degree in zoology. While there, I developed a love of insects after taking a great entomology class with Dr. John Abbott (now at the University of Alabama).

I spent a little time working at a biotech/pharmaceutical company in Austin, then decided to go to graduate school for entomology. I ended up at Texas A&M, where completed a masters degree. During that experience, I became curious about learning more details of phylogenetic methods, biodiversity, taxonomy, and morphology of insects. So I decided to look at more grad school focusing on these aspects of entomology. This took me to Ohio State University. Several years later after finishing that, I landed a postdoc position in Hawai'i. I returned to central Texas and worked at Schreiner, a small rural independent residential school, for ten years. In 2024 I moved on the Del Mar College to better serve faculty and students as a department chair, while supporting the values and mission of community college on the Texas Gulf Coast in a vibrant and diverse mid sized city.