Dr. Steffenson is an Associate Professor of Biology who currently teaches General Biology I and II, Entomology, Ecophysiology, Biostatistics, and Evolution. He received his PhD from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2014 in Quantitative Biology, or biology with a concentration in biostatistics. His dissertation emphasized identifying mechanisms that affect the success of wolf spider foraging efforts. He also received a Masters from Tennessee Technological University in 2009, where he studied how elevation and the geographic distribution of isolated populations of scorpions affected their life history variation. Dr. Steffenson earned a Bachelors of Science in Biology from Siena College, a small liberal arts college in upstate New York, in 2006. In the past several years, Dr. Steffenson has started working on an extension of his dissertation work with honeybees. He seeks to identify how ecological factors have been influencing the immunological activity of honeybees, and how this may be related to the recent population decline of honeybees across the world, a phenomenon referred to as colony collapse disorder (CCD).
My job allows me to integrate my two greatest passions, teaching and research. I believe that undergraduate research opportunities are a natural extension of learning in the classroom, and are critical in helping students to fully develop their skills as junior scientists. By providing research projects for undergraduates to participate in, I believe that students are able to truly understand how science functions to help us understand the natural world around us.
2022-present, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, St. Edward's University, Austin TX
2017-present, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, St. Edward's University, Austin, TX
2014-2017, Assistant Professor of Biology, Adams State University, Alamosa, CO
Ph.D. in Quantitative Biology at the University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, 2014
M.S. in Biology at Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, TN, 2009
B.S. in Biology at Siena College, Loudonville, NY, 2006