Josie

As a child, Josie loved learning about the natural world and the ecosystems around her in Annapolis, whether that was the Chesapeake Bay or local forests. With the old adage “choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life,” she decided to turn her passion for biology into her life’s work.

Since there is so much to explore in the world of biology, she dipped her toe in a few pools, each one inching her a bit closer to academia: she traveled to both Kenya and Ecuador to learn more about their agricultural systems; she was a botany technician surveying ecosystem restoration in eastern Oregon; she developed lesson plans at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center for high school environmental science students; and finally, she set foot in a classroom to teach ecology and evolution. At this point, she decided academia was where she would dive in.

Josie loves connecting with students to help them find their own passion for learning about our world. Since she understands that science is not everyone’s cup of tea, she aims to make learning fun; she achieves this by infusing her passion into each lesson and connecting subject matter with real-world examples and students’ passions outside the classroom. She also focuses on ensuring her students have a solid grasp of the fundamentals, so that learning complex topics can be more intuitive.

As a lover of science, Amanda enjoys finding answers to the “whys” and “hows” of life. For instance, how can you quantify gravity, and why do we experience gravity on earth the way we do? She finds those questions fascinating. (She can also now explain that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…) Along those lines, she also greatly enjoys math since it is a powerful tool for understanding, quantifying, and describing scientific phenomena.

Amanda started off on a journey through the SATs which helped earn her a merit scholarship for college. She started studying chemistry, then quickly found physics to be her true passion. Insatiably, Amanda then pursued several graduate degrees in physics. Amanda enjoys taking a thorough, step-by-step approach with her students to connect concepts in theory to the real world. She also enjoys working with students of all academic abilities to assist them in building on their foundational knowledge to achieve their best performance.