The Evo-Ed Team

Dr. Pete White (pwhite@msu.edu) is an Associate Professor at Michigan State University. His research program has a dual focus in science education and moth ecology. He was the primary creator of the original Evo-Ed curricular materials and was the primary author of the associated evolution education. Since then he has been the PI of several NSF-funded projects in the realms of evolution education and authentic project-based learning. He teaches undergraduate courses in introductory biology and critical thinking, as well as various graduate seminars in pedagogy and entomology topics. His innovation and commitment to evidenced-based practices has earned him local, regional, and national teaching awards from Michigan State University, the Entomological Society of America, and the National Association of Biology Teachers.

Dr. Jim Smith is an Emeritus Professor of Biology in the Lyman Briggs College at Michigan State University, with a joint appointment in the MSU Department of Entomology. He has taught introductory biology and senior capstone courses (e.g., Evolutionary Medicine, Nature-Nurture) for undergraduates within the Lyman Briggs College, as well as having conducted research and scholarship in evolution education. Jim was the PI on the NSF project that developed the Integrative Cases in Evolution Education (Evo-Ed cases), as well as having been the the Co-PI on the NSF-funded Avida-ED Active LENS project. In his entomological work, he examines the evolutionary relationships of Rhagoletis fruit flies and their parasitoid wasps. These efforts focus on deciphering the evolutionary relationships of naturally occurring Rhagoletis species and populations that are distributed across the temperate zones of the Old and New World. Smith is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dr. Merle Heidemann is a Senior Specialist Emeritus in Michigan State University’s College of Natural Science. Her work had two major foci: (1) developing and implementing science courses for pre-service and in-service science teachers; (2) evaluating learning outcomes of college students in both introductory and upper level courses. Her work showed that most students view topics in the biological sciences as isolated “beads” without any “string” to hold it all together. Thus, she worked with Smith as co-PI on the NSF project that developed the Integrative Cases in Evolution Education (Evo-Ed cases). The objective of this work was (and is) to help students see connections across the curriculum using the principles of evolution as a framework (“string”).

Dr. David Filice is a fixed-term Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Mt. Allison University, where he is teaching introductory biology, evolutionary medicine, and a variety of other upper-year level courses. He worked as the EvoMedEd postdoctoral research associate from 2021-2022. Along with contributing to develop and implement the Evolution and Human Health cases, working on this project augmented his ability to achieve his classroom goals of teaching natural science students to become integrative thinkers, and how evolutionary theory can be applied to better understand humans. Using fruit flies as a model, his research focuses on understanding how genetics and environmental conditions interact to explain variation in behavioral phenotypes, and investigating the evolutionary implications of this variation.

Dr. Joe Riedy is an instructor and post-doctoral researcher at Michigan State University. He currently teaches a graduate level statistics course while also working as a post-doc for the EvoEd project. He will begin teaching introductory biology lecture and laboratory courses as a fixed-term Associate Professor at MSU in 2023. Here, he will implement and assess EvoEd curricular materials. As he begins his career as a biology instructor, he is excited to employ interesting evidence-based teaching practices in his courses. He recently earned a PhD from MSU, where he studied freshwater ecology and first got involved with EvoEd. Joe’s research focuses on the evolution, behavioral adaptations, and conservation of lake sturgeon, a large threatened fish species native to the Great Lakes region.