Teaching

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David Luther, PhD

Associate Professor

Biology Department

 

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Courses:

Animal Behavior 472/532 - Fall

Ornithology 437/537 - Spring

Animal Communication 508 - Fall

Community Ecology 692 - Spring

Also graduate seminars

 

All courses are cross listed for the Biology and the

Environmental Science and Policy Departments

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2025 Awarded and implemented Living Lab project in which we are giving students field experience with NextGeneration Biodiversity monitoring techniques from camera traps, eDNA, drone imagery, and acoustic monitoring and AI species identification in the classroom and laboratory settings.

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COS Deans Fellow on Teaching Excellence

2025 Chaired report on the promotion of Teaching Excellence in the College of Science

2024 Chaired report on Future Needs in Science Education

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TEACHING AND MENTORING AWARDS

2023          Mason COS Teaching Excellence Award

2021          Mason OSCAR Sustained Mentoring Excellence Award

2021          Mason Stearns Center Teaching Excellence Award

2019          Mason Core Teaching Award Spring

2015          Mentoring Excellence Award from the OSCAR Students as Scholars program at GMU

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My teaching philosophy emphasizes interactive and hands-on learning, which aims to promote critical thinking and broaden students’ perspectives. Both in the classroom and in the field I challenge students to be inquisitive, to develop their own hypotheses and to design their own experiments. As an instructor of introductory biology, ornithology, animal communication, community ecology, and animal behavior, I take every opportunity to connect students with their local outdoor environments and the organisms that live there. I am a strong supporter of undergraduate research and every semester I provide opportunities for several undergraduate students to conduct and help design research projects in my research group at George Mason University (GMU).

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