Borrett Teaching Statement (updated 1/3/2010)

 

Past Courses

• Ecology. UNCW Bio366

• Ecology Laboratory. UNCW Biol366

• Bringing Home the Biosphere. UNCW Bio495

• Fundamentals of Ecological Modelling. UNCW BIO534 & BIOL534

• Ecological Thought: Past to Present. UNCW BIO602

• Systems Ecology and Ecological Network Analysis. UNCW Su 2011, Beijing Normal University Su13

• Ecological Network Analysis

May 2023 @ ISEM2023. Here is a link to the workshop materials

May 2016 @ ISEM2016. Here is a link to the workshop materials

August 2015 @ ESA (#esa100). Here is a link to the workshop materials.

March 2011 @ Northern Arizona University: Workshop: Introduction to Ecological Network Analysis

• R Tutorial (with Matt Lau). UNCW Su2011

• UNCW R Tutorial Notes by Matt Lau @NAU

• Additional R Resources: CRAN, Kickstarting R, Addicted to R

• Example: Forest Data, Forest Analysis1

• 2006. Stanford University. Fundamentals of Ecological Modeling. Undergraduate and graduate course. Co-instructor: K.R. Arrigo. Stanford, CA.

• 2003. Institute of Ecology. Ecological Thought: Past to Present. Required course for ecology graduate students. Co-instructors: B.C. Patten, S.J. Whipple. Athens, GA. syllabus

• 2003. Skidaway Institute of Oceanography. Ecosystem Complexity in the Marine Environment – Seeking an Answer to the Question: What is Biocomplexity? Three week short course for undergraduate and graduate students. Co-instructors: P.G. Verity, M.E. Frischer, B.C. Patten, S.J. Whipple. Skidaway, GA.

• Guest Lecturer and Teaching Assistant. 2002. Institute of Ecology. Theory of Systems Ecology. Graduate course. Professor: B.C. Patten. Athens, GA.

 

 

Fall 2013

Schedule

 

1 hour seminar, Fall 2015

Description

We are linked through a myriad of networks. Google lets us search the World Wide Web of information, Facebook helps us stay in touch with friends, and LinkedIn promises to help us find jobs. We use
transportation networks to move ourselves and goods, power grids to distribute our power, and even our language can be bound into web like word clouds. Darwin recognized the tangled webs of life that are
central to evolution by natural selection. In this interdisciplinary honors course, students will discover the emerging area of network science. Students will explore the diversity of networks in our social, technological, and natural world, and learn about tools to model and analyze them. Upon completion, successful students will be able to identify and describe network patterns common in complex systems, along with their relative weaknesses and strenghts.

Schedule

Other Resources

BIO 534 :: Advanced Ecology :: Fundamentals of Ecological Modeling

Fall 2017

Schedule

Additional Resources

SPHERICAL HORSES & FRICTIONLESS WHEELS, Engines of our Ingenuity Podcast 2334

The Scale of Nature: Modeling the Mississippi River | K.D. Cheramie, March 2011

 

BIOL 534 | Advanced Ecology Laboratory | Fundamentals of Ecological Modeling

Fall 2016

Schedule

 

R Programming Help, Tutorials, & Advice

There are lots of R programming resources on the web. I am collecting a few more useful resources here.

A plea for consistent style! | http://sas-and-r.blogspot.com -- Style guides for writing more readable code.

Google's R Style Guide | Google -- Style guides for writing more readable code.

Functional Programmin via Cupcakes | Stanley Wickham -- Wickham is arguing that we should replace many for-loops with functions. I learned two additional elments: the seq_along() function and the purr library.

R Tutorial for Beginners: A Quick Start-Up Kit | Mitchell A. Sanders -- this is a very terse introduction that assumes a bit of knowledge about computer programming.

R Reference Card | CRAN R-Project

An Introduction to R | CRAN R-Project -- this is a very helpful resource for beginning R coding.

R-bloggers | R news and tutorial site.

-- Mastering R Plot | Part 1 Colors, Legends, & Lines | Part 2 Axes | Part 3 Outer Margins

Presentation Resources 

Here are links to several sources of advice on making and giving high quality presentations

Life After Death by PowerPoint | Don McMillan

Death by PowerPoint | Alexei Kapterev

How to avoid death By PowerPoint | David JP Phillips

The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint | Edward Tufte

 

Spring 2011 Schedule

Topic Proposals

1. Spatial Ecology

2. Soil Biodiversity

3. Restoration Ecology

4. Microbial Biodiversity

5. Metabolic Ecology

6. Keystone Species

 

 

 

Systems Ecology :: Summer 2013

This course was co-taught with Dr. John Schramski (UGA) at Beijing Normal University

Course Resources

Software for Ecological Network Analysis

Lecture Notes

Invitation

Dr. Borrett is always looking for hardworking and intellectually curious studnets to join the SEE Laboratory's journey of scientific discovery. Studnets can work in the lab at all levels: undergraduate Directed Independnet Studies, honors projects, masters thesis, and PhD disertations. If you are considering joining the lab, please peruse this website and read a few of our recent publications to develop a better understanding of our work. While the scope of our research can be quite broad, I recommend you start with this encyclopedia entry on Network Ecology as much of our work falls in this domain. If this work interests you, please contact Dr. Borrett directly (borretts {@} uncw.edu).

Resources

I am listing a few resources here that new and older studnets may find useful.

Journey into the Unknown, Brian Greene discussess the journey that is science.

Simplfying Complexity, TED talk by Eric Berlow about using network science to undersatand complex systems. In an interesting follow up talk, Dr. Berlow and Sean Gourley illustrate Mapping Ideas Worth Spreading.

Expectations

This page is still under construction, but here are a few guiding principles.

"We write to think, not think to write" Bart Dredge @Austin College. A corrolary of this principle is that unclear writing is evidence of unclear thinking.

Science is a community activity. We publish our work so that it can contribute to the protracted discourse that is science discovery and knowledge construction. Given this position, science does not really exist until it is publically available -- until its published in some form.

All studnets are expected to participate in scheduled laboratory meetings.

DIS

Honors

Masters

PhD

 

 

 

This tab is a collection of resources for academic advising at UNCW.

General

Here are some general resources for students.

Apps for Students (courtesey of UNCW CHHS)

 

Internships

Guidelines for Internships at UNCW

Internship information from the UNCW Career Center. This site includes links to the necessary forms.

Courses

There are lots of interesting and useful courses at taught at UNCW. This is a list of courses that I recommend for biology and marine biology majors who are looking for challenging, interesting, and perhaps useful courses outside of the normal track.

Practicing Science

Scientists Have No Defense Against Awe | Choudhry @ Nautilus 2016

The Mistrust of Science | A Gawande @ The New Yorker 2016

Miscellaneous: Teaching, Learning, Communicating

Advice on writing emails to professors.

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Borrett has taught a number of short workshops or tutorials on Ecological Network Analysis. Here are links to the workshop pages and course materials

Simple enaR Tutorial (illustrated example of use with the Cone Springs model)

2023 May. @ISEM 2023. Ecological Network Analysis Tutorial. Taught with Brian Fath.

2019 October. @ISEM 2019 Ecological Network Analysis Tutorial. Taught with Brian Fath, Ursula Scharler, and Caner Kazanci

2016 September. @ECSA56. Ecological Network Analysis Tutorial

2016 May. @International Society for Ecological Modelling. Introduction to Ecological Network Analysis

2015 August. @Ecological Society of America. Introduction to Ecological Network Analysis

2011 March @ Northern Arizona University: Workshop: Introduction to Ecological Network Analysis