Professor, Environmental Science | Associate Dean, Faculty Advancement | Specialist, Environmental Science | Member of the Graduate Faculty
I joined the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center WRRC) in November 2011 after a 10-year career with the USDA-Agricultural Research Service. As Associate Director of the WRRC, I contributed to human resource management, including supervision of staff and leading committees for staff searches; additional duties included planning and execution of fundraising; long-term strategic planning and reporting of metrics; and chairing committees for organizing the WRRC Annual Conferences and other events involving water management professionals, elected officials, and WRRC stakeholders. My research program is directed towards establishing impacts of anthropogenic stressors on microbiological presence and function in soil and water and identifying linkages between microbes in the natural environment and human health. Recent studies include examining the potential for trace contaminants in degraded irrigation water and biosolids to induce development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria; and performing molecular and cultural analyses of bacterial regrowth, survival, and transport in irrigation water and soils to establish links to fresh produce safety. Since 2017 I have been teaching a formal technical writing course, Scientific Writing for the Environmental, Agricultural, and Life Sciences. This course, traditionally taught in the fall, expanded to include a spring session in 2019, for a total of 6 teaching credits per year. This course is taught at both undergraduate ENVS 408) and graduate ENVS 508) levels. In 2018, I left my administrative role at the WRRC to assume a position as Assistant Dean for Faculty Advancement in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. In this position, my responsibilities include working with faculty, unit heads, and faculty governance teams in solving problems and identifying opportunities that will enhance faculty success. My duties include coordination of college-level review of promotion and tenure/continuing status, administering the annual faculty review processes, coordinating post-tenure reviews, addressing faculty grievances, and facilitating multiple programs focused on ensuring faculty advancement.