I knew even as a college student that I wanted to teach at a small liberal arts school like Warren Wilson. I enjoyed small class sizes, great interactions with my professors, and personal attention that allowed me to succeed in my own academic career, and I wanted to one day positively impact students from the other side of the coin. I fell in love with forest ecology and ecosystem dynamics in college, and I ended up working in tropical rainforests as a graduate student, Eastern deciduous forests as a postdoctoral fellow, as well as conifer forests out west as an Assistant Professor. However, I was finally pulled back into the southern Appalachians where I call home, close to where I grew up in northeast Georgia. The Warren Wilson College Forest is a truly unique resource to teach students about forest concepts and applications that will hopefully make them better-informed citizens and land stewards regardless of their chosen career paths.
Warren Wilson has some of the most accessible experiential learning opportunities of any college campus in the country. It is one of the primary reasons why I wanted to be here as a faculty member, particularly when the forest is a stone’s throw away from the classroom!