Eric Alden Smith: Teaching Statement

During my tenure at UW I contributed to four different curricula: sociocultural anthropology (primarily undergraduate), biocultural anthropology (primarily graduate), the graduate program in environmental anthropology, and the interdisciplinary undergraduate environmental studies curriculum of the UW Program on Environment. In all of these programs, my course was strongly multidisciplinary. In addition, I served on a number of PhD committees of archaeology graduate students, particularly those concerned with analysis of hunter-gatherer subsistence. I retired from teaching in 2012, and "fledged" my last PhD student in 2013.

My primary undergraduate offerings included ANTH 310 (Native North American Societies), which I offered nearly annually until retirement, ANTH 457 (Ecological Anthropology), and BIOA 470 (Evolution of Human Social Behavior).  Professor Don Grayson and I developed (and team-taught) BIOA 475 (Environmental Impacts of Small-Scale Societies).  Professor Carl Bergstrom (Zoology) and I developed and taught (once) a non-technical interdisciplinary introduction to game theory (ANTH/BIOL 320, Game Theory, Evolution, and Behavior).

In the last two decades, my graduate teaching was concentrated in the areas of human behavioral ecology (my research specialty) and environmental anthropology, an innovative graduate program which I co-founded and directed for its first 4 years (now unfortunately moribund).  I co-directed (with Timothy Kohler, Washington State University) a five-year (2006-2012) NSF-funded IGERT graduate training program on "Model-based approaches to biological and cultural evolution".

My involvement in UW's Program on the Environment (PoE) goes back to its inception several years ago. I was heavily involved in the planning groups that developed the core curriculum and the structure of the major and minor in PoE, and served on the instructional team for several of the PoE core courses, which rely on a case-study framework and various active learning techniques. This multidisciplinary teaching (my co-instructors have come from Zoology, History, Public Health, Political Science, and Geography) was both challenging and inspiring.

PhDs I supervised in my final decade before retirement:

Courtney Carothers (Environmental, 2008): Marine tenure and co-management in Southwest Alaska (dissertation supported by an NSF grant and a Wenner-Gren Foundation award; currently Associate Professor in the School of Fisheries & Ocean Sciences at U of Alaska, Fairbanks)
Nan Greer (Environmental, 2005): Agroecology, conservation, and land use in taro farming systems, Kaua'i, Hawaii (dissertation research supported by an NSF grant; currently research director of Alistar Foundation, working in Nicaragua; previously adjunct faculty at Kauai Community College and College of Redlands)
Emily Lena Jones (Environmental, 2004; co-chaired with Don Grayson): Environmental archaeology, zooarchaeology, European mesolithic and Native American Southwest (dissertation supported by a Chateaubriand Fellowship and a UW Western Europe Dissertation Travel Grant; currently on the tenured faculty in Archaeology at U of New Mexico)
Geoff Kushnick (Biocultural, 2006): Parent-offspring conflict and maternal constraints (dissertation supported by Mellon Foundation and NSF; currently a lecturer in Biological Anthropology at Australia National University)
Henry Lyle (Biocultural, 2013): collective action, signaling, reputation, mutual aid; Andean herders (supported by an NSF dissertation research grant; currently on the professional IT staff at UW)
Siobhan Mattison (Biocultural, 2010): Parental investment in relation to socioeconomic structure and gender bias; Mosuo, China (dissertation supported by an NSF award and a CSDE traineeship; Mellon postdoc at Stanford U; currently tenured faculty in Biological Anthropology at U of New Mexico)
David Nolin (Biocultural, 2008): Game theory, experimental economics, behavioral ecology of cooperation (currently a research associate at Penn State U)
Karma Norman (Environmental): Marine tenure and co-management in Torres Strait, Australia (dissertation supported by an EPA STAR Fellowship and an NSF dissertation grant; currently staff scientist at Pacific Northwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, Seattle)
Brooke Scelza (Biocultural., 2008): Parental care, allocare, and life history of Martu, Western Australia (dissertation supported by an NSF grant and a Fulbright award; currently Associate Professor of  Biological Anthropology, UCLA)
Jennifer Sepez (Sociocultural/Environmental, 2002): Subsistence ecology and ethnobiology of Makah Indians, Neah Bay WA (supported by an EPA STAR Fellowship; was staff scientist at Alaska Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, Seattle; now retired)
Mary Shenk (Biocultural, 2004): Fertility change and reproductive strategies in urban India (dissertation supported by Mellon Foundation and NSF; currently a tenured faculty member in Anthropology and Population Studies at Penn State U)
Benjamin Trumble (Biocultural, 2011; co-chaired with K. O'Connor): evolutionary and physiological aspects of reproductive hormones (dissertation research supported by a CSDE traineeship and NIH-funded Tsimane Life History Project; currently an Assistant Professor in the Evolutionary Medicine at Arizona State U)
Ismael Vaccaro Ribo (Environmental, 2005; co-chaired with K. Sivaramakrishnan): Politics, history, and comanagement regimes in Catalunya, Spain (dissertation supported by La Caixa Fellowship; currently holds a joint faculty position in Anthropology and Environmental Studies at McGill University)