MEET YOUR FACULTY

PENELOPE M. KOINES, INSTRUCTOR

Academic Interests: Coastal vegetation and environmental education

Courses currently taught:

• PBIO 100 Plant Biology for Non-science Majors
• PBIO 123 Causes and Implications of Global Change
• PBIO 235 Environmental Science
• PBIO 255 Chesapeake: A Living Resource
• PBIO 455 Ecology of Marsh and Dune Vegetation
• BSCI 338K Living Within Limits: A Natural History of Sonoran Desert

Although my research in graduate school was in plant lipid biochemistry, I developed an interest in coastal vegetation while doing research at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory on Solomons Island, and currently have a research project on Assateague Island monitoring Phragmites australis populations for the National Park Service.

Selected as a Lilly Fellow by the Center for Teaching Excellence and the Office of Undergraduate Studies, 2007-2008.

I am active in environmental conservation organizations both on campus and in my community. For many years I have been Faculty Advisor to ECO, the student Environmental Conservation Organization, and am on the Advisory Board of College Park Scholars in Environmental Science. At home, I have been active as a member of numerous conservation organizations, a volunteer at the Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary, and give talks for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

Idea of a good time: Mucking around the marshes and beaches of the Eastern Shore, and eating Chesapeake Bay crabs!

Food for thought:

"The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born
of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was
supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man."

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring