WiSE is excited to congratulate Erin McCullough, an active member of WiSE Postdocs and a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Biology Department at Syracuse University, for receiving this year’s T. H. Huxley Award from the Society for the Study of Evolution. This award honors outreach and education achievements for early and mid-career scientists, and supports awardees to present their work at the annual National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) conference.

The award recognizes the work of McCullough and colleague Lauren Verdeflor on their project titled “Exploratory activities for understanding evolutionary relationships depicted by phylogenetic trees: united but diverse.” McCullough says this educational resource encompasses “a series of hands-on, interactive activities to help teach high school students about phylogenetic trees and the evolutionary relationships they represent.”

During the past two summers, McCullough has worked with high school biology teachers to develop teaching modules as part of a larger project funded by the National Science Foundation. The award-winning project has been published as an article in the journal The American Biology Teacher.