2009-10 Faculty Senate Members > Science
Stephen Jenkins
Term Expires:
May 2010
Phone: 784-6078
Website: website
Email: jenkins@unr.edu
Brief Bio: I have been a faculty member in the Biology Department at UNR since 1974, teaching courses in ecology, mammalogy, research design, and related areas. I’ve advised 13 PhD students and 18 MS students and serve on a large number of graduate student committees. My students and I have studied the behavior of mammals such as beavers, ground squirrels, and feral horses. Our current work includes field and laboratory studies of individual variation in behavior of kangaroo rats. We are trying to establish kangaroo rats as a new model system for studying the causes and consequences of personality differences in animals. My teaching and research has led to increasing concern about the lack of critical thinking about science by members of the general public, who vote on issues involving science but seem to have little understanding of the roles of logic and evidence in deciding these issues. In 2004 I published a book on this topic called How science works: Evaluating evidence in biology and medicine, and I am planning a new core course for non-majors at UNR to further develop this theme.
Alexander Kumjian
Term Expires:
May 2010
Phone: 784-4615
Website: website
Email: alex@unr.edu
Brief Bio: PhD, UC Berkeley 1980
Hired at UNR 1987
Tenure 1990
Promotion 2000
Swatee Naik
Term Expires:
May 2012
Phone: (775) 784-6020
Website: website
Email: naik@unr.edu
Brief Bio: Swatee Naik is a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. Her research specialty is low dimensional topology; in particular the study of knotted circles in the three-dimensional sphere. She joined UNR in 1994 after completing graduate study at Indiana University. She has served as the core mathematics director and interim department chair.