Teacher and student on field trip

what courses we teach

Steve Smith teaches three courses each year with the help of graduate teaching assistants and undergraduate preceptors. Plant Biology (PLS 240) and Field Botany Lecture (RNR 230R) and Laboratory (RNR 230L) are all offered in the fall semester. Field Botany Lecture is also taught online in Spring Semester and the first Summer Session. Grazing Ecology and Management (RAM 436a/536a) is lecture only and is offered Spring Semester.

Steve Smith also teaches Our place in nature: Biology and the environment (RNR 170C1). This is a Tier 1 NATS "hybrid" general education course. There is one 50-minute lecture each week. The remainder of course content is available online. The goal of the course is to understand how living things and physical processes interconnect to produce the environments that we live in. Emphasis is placed on the relevance of biology to contemporary issues in human society.