Teaching and Courses

Advising

I thoroughly enjoy advising graduate students as they move toward their degree. I currently serve as the advisor for three MA students, as a committee member for six MA students, and two PhD students at institutions outside of UWF.  Graduate student admission processes and requirements can be found on the UWF page linked on my home page. Current students will find the following helpful as we move you toward your degree: Graduate Program Planner.

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Current topics of my graduate students:

”Evaluating Diet and Gender among Subadults, Adolescents, and Adults in ancient Copan, Honduras” (Chair)

“Childhood at Copan: Correlating Dental Development and Long-bone Growth in a Prehistoric Urban Center” (Chair)

“Paleopathology of Migrants at the ancient Maya site of Copan, Honduras” (Chair)

“The Cultural Anthropology of Autism and University Education”

“Migration, Kinship, and Identity in the Three-Rivers Region of Belize among the Early Classic Maya”

Topics of past graduate students:

“A Hierarchy of Expert Performance as Applied to Forensic Anthropology”

“Social Identities and Isotopic Analyses of the Burials from the Archaeological Site of Ucanal, Petén, Guatemala”

“Skeletal Markers of Stress: Investigating Possible Migrant Remains in a South Florida Cold-case Sample”

“Validating the Use of Osteoarthritis as an Indicator of Age in Human Skeletal Remains”

“Does Structural Violence Impact Forensic Anthropological Age Estimation?: Investigating Skeletal Indicators of Biological ‘Weathering’ in Modern U.S. Individuals”

“Comparisons of Mortuary Data and Demography for AME  Zion Cemetery and the Poor Farm in Pensacola, FL”

Teaching

I am committed to teaching students through real-world examples, hands-on learning, and thoughtful discourse in spoken and written communications. I believe that anthropology offers a great deal to our students and to society as it fosters understanding of the myriad ways in which humans create and maintain their lives in various social, political, and economic contexts. The more we understand each other, the better our society can be. My teaching has been recognized for excellence with awards during my time at Indiana University East and during my graduate career at Arizona State University.

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I have taught students in English and Spanish in the university classroom, in the field during excavations and field schools, and as a visiting professor at the national university in Honduras.

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Within the community, I seek opportunities to serve through education outreach in the form of public lectures, lectures in classes for K-12 schools, and organizations such as Girls Inc.

Graduate Courses

Currently offered at UWF: Mortuary Analysis; Bioarchaeology; Embodiment of Inequality; Evolutionary and Biological Anthropological Theory; Human Osteology; Primatology; Advanced Methods in Biological Anthropology; Mortuary Anthropology: Excavation, Analysis and Interpretation