Brenna Lynn Decker, Ph.D.

OVERVIEW: Higher education allows many people to experience vast amounts of opportunity as they progress towards their personalized career path. It is the position of the educator and teacher that aids in facilitating career exploration and skill strengthening. Over my years as a graduate teaching assistant and instructor of record at two different universities, there are three aspects of teaching that I have found to be most important. First, the instructor, as a life-long learner, should practice and adapt lectures, discussions, and activities based on experience, student feedback, and the latest educational research. Second, the primary goal of most courses is to strengthen critical and holistic thinking as well as oral and written communication of concepts. And finally, any higher education should prepare students for their career path, including understanding various perspectives that they may encounter outside the academic environment. All of these factor into adult learning theory, centering the student within the course topic and real-world relatable content.

OVERVIEW: My research interests are at the intersection of ecology and systematics. As an ecologist, I strive to understand the relationships between organisms and the environment in relation to altered habitats. As a systematist, I focus on species delimitation to estimate both functional niche groups and species distributions. I consistently turn to behavioral data, phylogenomics, and natural history collections to address questions pertaining to biogeography, evolution, and environmental sustainability. Aside from this research, mentoring the next generation of independent critical-thinkers about the vast worlds of both ecology and systematics is an additional interest and a core personal value. 

The uniqueness and vast amounts of data housed at natural history collections provides countless avenues to address biodiversity, habitat, and climate change. I, as a trained entomologist, am interested in continuing to use insect abundances, habitat, hosts, and behaviors to address my research questions and to help others achieve their research goals.

OVERVIEW: As someone who has worked extensively within academia, I have had an opportunity to witness and explore various applications of educational resources, with a major focus on entomology collections and their research and outreach uses. My goal as a curator or collections manager lies within supporting a collection in a way that makes the specimens and information useful and available to both the institution and the broader research and public community. As I have participated in the organization, digitization, and public outreach associated with entomology collections, I have come to develop a strong value system that supports my interests in providing educational opportunities in a wide variety of disciplines and establishing baseline data for future research and policy decision-making.