We are a group of graduate students and postdocs in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale. Although our interests in ecology and evolution range from savanna ecosystems to fish genetics, all of us are passionate about education. Students generally learn best from interactive experiences, and flipped classrooms are a powerful way to facilitate interactive learning in the classroom. With Prof. Steven Stearns as our advisor, we applied for and won a Yale Center for Teaching and Learning Rosenkranz Grant for Pedagogical Advancement in 2017 to film short educational talks at the Yale Broadcast Studio.
The founding member of F&F. From left to right, Prof. Steven Stearns, Dr. Maud Quinzen, Nikunj Goel, Dr. Nate Upham, Madelon Case, Anna Vinton, Dan MacGuigan, and Evlyn Pless. Not pictured is Dr. Larry Bowman.
The goals for our videos are two-fold: 1) to reach students around the globe with engaging talks on the fundamentals and frontiers in our field, and 2) to become more skilled educators who are prepared to use recorded videos as a tool in our interactive classrooms. Each of our videos has been workshopped with audiences of our peers in ecology and evolutionary biology and high school students in the New Haven area.
We hope you enjoy our videos, and we encourage you to be in touch if you want to learn more, collaborate, or set-up a similar program at your university! We especially encourage Yale graduate students and postdocs from other departments to contact us if you would like to join this platform.