Congratulations Kallie and Kirsten

I’m so proud of my two DU undergraduate mentees. Kallie Feldhaus and Kirsten Fetrow presented their research at The Front Range Student Ecology Symposium this week, and both won awards! Kallie one 1st place and Kirsten won 2nd place for best undergraduate poster. They have worked very hard and did an amazing job presenting their research. Congrats ladies. It has been such a pleasure working with you over the past year! #mamabearmoment

Kallie Feldhaus with her 1st place poster and coauthors (Whitley Lehto, Gabby Gurule-Small, Kallie, me, and Claudia Hallagan) at FRSES 2/2018

Kirsten Fetrow with her winning poster (2nd place) at FRSES 2018

Kirsten Fetrow presents her research at FRSES 2/2018

Kallie Feldhaus presents her research at FRSES 2/2018

Greeley girls teach local scientists about the zombie apocalypse!

Science Club, an after school authentic science program at Bella Romero Academy of Technology run by Katie Guilbert and me,  just wrapped up another successful year. For the past 6 months, 10 enthusiastic 8th-grade girls have been working on a research project investigating the difference in cognitive ability between wild and domestic guppies–they tested whether guppies could learn to fear zombies! This week, they presented their research at a regional scientific conference, The Front Range Student Ecology Symposium. They were SO amazing! They were professional and poised, and they enthusiastically presented their outstanding research. Their excitement about their original research was contagious, and many conference participants commented on how impressed they were. I’m so proud of them!!! Thank you FRSES for the chance to be a part of the scientific community. *Pictures*

Digital evolution workshop

Whitley Lehto, Mayra Vidal, Gabby Gurule-Small, and I introduced Avida-ED digital evolution software (developed at BEACON) at a regional conference, The Front Range Ecology Symposium. We had a great group of attendees that are passionate about evolution education. They loved learning about the Avida-ED program, and many of them already have ideas for how they might include Avida activities in their classes! *Pictures*

Gabby Gurule-Small, Dale Broder, Mayra Vidal, Whitley Lehto present an Avida-ED workshop 2/2018 in Fort Collins, CO

Papers out today!

I’m so excited to share my work about how authentic science with guppies can increase acceptance of as well as knowledge about evolution by natural selection. We have a sister paper that came out in the same issue, which describes the guppy kits. All of the coauthors from teachers to pedagogic researchers to evolutionary biologists have been a joy to work with. I’m so proud of this work! #collaborationmakeseverythingbetter

Here are PDFs of the papers: Broder et al. 2018 and Kane et al. 2018