Hello. I’m Becca, an Assistant Professor in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Program at the University of Washington, Bothell.
I'm so pleased to be part of a faculty that's dedicated to providing a high quality and well-rounded undergraduate education to as many people as possible. Many campuses offer interdisciplinary learning--a holistic approach integrating writing, quantitative skills, natural, physical and social sciences with the humanities and arts--to their honors students, but few programs offer this invigorating approach to all of their students. In my opinion, many students enjoy interdisciplinary learning more, because it encourages them to connect their life experiences to their studies.
All of my courses address evolution, but they do so in a variety of ways. Discovery Core I: Growing Things combines elements of art—especially dance—and science to foster an appreciation of evolution. Similarly, The Visual Art of Biology addresses how the visual arts have influenced natural history throughout Western history, and vice versa. The History of Life and Evolution are more traditional course topics, but I spice up the former by emphasizing how fossils influence pop culture, and and the latter focuses on community-based learning. Scientific Journeys: The Universe, Earth and Life combines diverse scientific fields like biology, chemistry, astronomy and physics to appreciate the physical evolution of our universe in addition to the organic evolution that shapes our biosphere. Evolution is the basis of understanding all biology, and in Introduction to Biology, I embrace the program's learning goals by teaching students how to think critically through shared leadership, communication and interdisciplinary research as they learn the principles of biological reasoning.
My research explores why organisms change their shapes through time and space. Most of it involves sea shells, specifically snails from a group called neogastropods that has thousands of species throughout the world’s oceans. Neogastropods also have a rich fossil record extending back at least 140 million years ago. As you can imagine, the thousands of neogastropod species from today’s oceans and from the fossil record have thousands of different shell shapes. But why are there so many species and so many shapes? To answer these questions, I’ve developed methods for quantifying shell shapes and statistically comparing groups of shells. Currently, my main project aims to document the many ecological influences on the rate of shell growth in a morphologically variables species called Nucella lamellosa. Eventually, I will use these data to quantify the energy trade-offs associated with growing a large shell rapidly--because this is correlated to breeding more offspring, and thus increasing evolutionary fitness--a strong shell, and one that is easy to repair.
If you would like to work in my lab, please check out my research page and send me an e-mail that expresses your interests.