I was born in Oakland, California, in 1954 and raised in suburban Walnut Creek in a family that includes two younger brothers. My education has taken place almost entirely in Roman Catholic schools. I attended De La Salle High School in Concord, California from 1968-1972 with the intention of becoming a physician. Though accepted to UCLA, I instead chose to enter a Roman Catholic order of teaching brothers (the Brothers of the Christian Schools, known in the U.S. simply as the Christian Brothers). As a young brother, I majored in biology and minored in religious studies at St. Mary's College, Moraga, California. I graduated magna cum laude in 1977 and was assigned by my religious superiors to teach at La Salle High School in Pasadena, California, where I remained for 4 years, teaching various courses in biology and religion and earning a California Secondary Teaching Credential. In 1981, I was assigned to Justin-Siena High School in Napa, California, where I again taught various courses in biology and religion.

I was granted a leave from teaching in 1984 in order that I might pursue a doctorate in biology with the ultimate aim of joining the faculty at my alma mater. I was accepted to the graduate school of the University of Notre Dame, awarded a Schmidt Fellowship, and began working toward a doctorate in biology. My research interests included evolutionary biology (a redundancy, really) and aquatic ecology, and my dissertation -- completed in 1989 under Dr. Stephen Carpenter -- combined these two interests. I attempted to elucidate the adaptive significance of daily vertical migration among crustacean zooplankton.

While at Notre Dame, I decided to end my 14-year stint with the religious order. Also while at Notre Dame, I served as a teaching assistant in several courses. My favorite TA assignments were the laboratories connected to the introductory biology course for majors. I came to realize that my strength lay much more in teaching than in ecological research and as my time at Notre Dame came to a close, I pursued post-doctoral positions with a teaching emphasis. I found, and was offered, such a position at LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where I worked for 3 years with Dr. Marshall Sundberg. I taught introductory biology to both majors and non-majors, I organized and conducted outreach programs for high school biology teachers and I conducted research on the efficacy of traditional (descriptive) laboratories versus investigative laboratories and on the difference in achieving learning outcomes between majors and non-majors.

The post-doctoral position ended in 1992 and I accepted a position as an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Texas Tech University as a sort of specialist in biology education. Here, my chief responsibility is to offer a high-quality, state-of-the-art course in general biology for life science majors with the hope that this course will help increase Texas Tech's contribution of scholars and high-quality scientists. This position is a unique one in my Department for there is a greater emphasis on teaching than on research. What little research I do perform is in the area of the pedagogy of biology. I am especially interested in improving education in high-enrollment biology courses, in the design of innovative investigative laboratories and in the "evolution versus creation" controversy. My other interests include cooking (and eating), hiking, classical music, reading, and travel.