I graduated from St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer, IN with a bachelor's in Biology.  Then I was accepted into a doctoral program at Texas A&M University for Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences (mainly specializing in marine mammals). For my dissertation, I studied the territorial behavior of male sea otters in Prince William Sound, Alaska.  Later, I spent some time in Gulfport, MS studying the effects of the BP Oil Spill on bottle-nose dolphins and several species of sea turtles in the Mississippi Sound. I teach Biol223, Biol101, and sections of Biol100 and 105 labs.