NRES 470/670: Applied Population Ecology
Offered every Spring semester
I serve as primary instructor for this course in applied population modeling aimed at future conservation biologists and wildlife managers. Originally developed in 2016 (and continuously updated), this course emphasizes practical approaches to problem-solving in ecology, conservation, and wildlife management via creative application of population ecology theory using simulation models and statistics.
NRES 746: Advanced Analysis Methods for Natural Resources and Environmental Science
Offered every other Fall semester (odd years)
I serve as primary instructor for this advanced graduate-level course in model-based inference, maximum likelihood and Bayesian methods in R. This course focuses on using computational algorithms to infer ecological processes and relationships from observed data, and students emerge with the skills to write their own algorithms to solve complex data analysis problems.
NRES 710: Graduate Environmental Statistics
Offered every other Fall semester (even years)
Starting in Fall 2020, I have served as primary instructor for a graduate level course designed to help graduate students achieve fundamental statistical competencies, including probability theory, correlation tests, ANOVA, regression, generalized linear models (GLM) and mixed-effects models. Students also gain proficiency in data visualization and analysis in R. Students emerge from this course understanding how and why statistical methods are fundamental to the generation of scientific knowledge.
R “Bootcamp”
Workshop series offered every Fall semester and periodically at scientific conferences
For many years (starting in 2018, ending in 2023), I led a 2-day (8 hours per day) workshop to introduce graduate students and faculty to the widely-used programming language R and provide hands-on experience using R to perform data exploration, visualization, and analysis. This workshop has been offered for credit (GRAD 778: Elements of Research Computing) as one component of a series of similar research computing seminars offered throughout the semester.
Advanced RSF Workshop
Workshop series offered through conferences
In 2025/2026 I developed and led a workshop to introduce wildlife professionals to state-of-the-art techniques for modeling wildlife habitat from telemetry data using generalized additive models (GAMs) with spatiotemporally varying random fields using packages in the programming language R. This workshop is designed to provide hands-on experience using R to perform resource selection analysis.
EECB 703: Principles of Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology
I served as primary instructor for this course in Fall 2017 and may occasionally rotate with other faculty in leading this course in the future. This course introduces incoming PhD students in the interdisciplinary EECB program (Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology) to the diverse disciplines that fall under the EECB umbrella, largely through a series of guest lectures from members of the EECB faculty at UNR.