About Me

My passion for biology springs from my love of animals and the outdoors. During much of my childhood, I lived on an old grape farm on the southeast side of Canandaigua Lake in Upstate New York, fishing, hiking, swimming in the lake and horseback riding. For me, the perfect day continues to be one that is spent largely outdoors with my family and our dog Sarah.

I came to Susquehanna University in 1993 after completing my undergraduate degree in animal science at Cornell University, my Ph.D. in genetics at Texas A&M University and my postdoctoral research in biochemistry at the National Institutes of Health. I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated my time at all three institutions, but my experiences helped clarify that I wanted my teaching career to be in a different kind of place. I wanted to get to know my students and to be able to work side by side with them in the classroom, the lab, the field, and even on the volleyball court (where I am an avid, if aging player).

Susquehanna University has provided me with all of those opportunities, and I love working here. My research on the heat-loving bacteria that live in hot soils above the Centralia, Pennsylvania, mine fire integrates fieldwork with modern molecular genetics analyses, and my students regularly discover fascinating new bacteria that may have important ecological, industrial and medical properties. This is a great place to be a biologist.

Courses Taught