Merrilyne somewhere in the Brooks Range in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge of Alaska.

I’m excited to be teaching my first section of Freshman Seminar. Being among a community of learners—like the one we’ll build in Freshman Seminar—helps me feel meaningfully engaged in the world.

Vladimir Nabokov wondered: “Does there not exist a high ridge, where the mountainside of ‘scientific’ knowledge joins the opposite slope of ‘artistic’ imagination?” Throughout much of my academic and professional life I’ve felt I had to choose between my dual passions of science and the humanities. Trying to walk that “high ridge,” I formally explored American Studies for a bachelor’s degree, and recently emerged from the Environmental Studies graduate program at UM. I hope your experience in Freshman Seminar helps you discover how to find and blend your own interests in a university setting.

I enjoy (and frequently am frustrated by) language, so I read from a variety of genres and for various reasons, and I try to write regularly. One of my new interests is playing ice hockey and I’m excited for the fall season, and generally am excited for fall in Missoula—it’s a spectacular place to witness the changing of the seasons. I find much joy in natural history: birding, botanizing, trying to find the story in tracks and scat or in the lay of the landscape. I value curiosity and a sense of wonder, traits we’ll be cultivating and tapping into throughout Freshman Seminar.