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I am a Korean-American ecologist that grew up in the Pacific Northwest. I have a lifelong love of wildlife which has guided my career and research towards investigating pressing issues in contemporary conservation. I view wildlife conservation as a holistic issue, involving governance and social understanding just as much as biological insight. As such, I strive to merge socio-economic and ecological frameworks into my teaching and research.

Previously, I completed my PhD at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2021, where my dissertation work focused on community-based conservation in Southern Africa, and my MS at North Carolina State University in 2016, where I studied human perceptions of coyotes in urban areas. Before entering graduate school, I spent time working in Yosemite National Park, completed my BA at the University of Pennsylvania, and spent time as a Fulbright research fellow in Namibia. Outside of the classroom, I enjoy rock climbing, birding and wildlife photography, all of which afford me more time to think about the connections between humans and wildlife.

Chemistry is a wonderful sandbox for developing intuition for scientific investigation. As an instructor I especially like to create opportunities for my students to model systems, create hypotheses, and come to conclusions on their own. I find that using multiple representations to describe or introduce a topic can be effective for engaging different types of learners, and tend to steer away from strictly equation-based teaching. It is my objective to assist students in becoming participatory learners, and part of that means that my own classroom needs to be a comfortable place to ask questions when confusion arises. I have struggled a fair amount in my own chemical education and appreciate that it can mean a lot of work for a student, and so I strive to make that work rewarding. 

Something that is very important to me is increasing the participation and retention of students from historically underrepresented groups in STEM. At CU Boulder I have acted as a mentor for the SMART program and the graduate-student-led group STEM Routes, which are both initiatives aimed at achieving this goal.

Outside of science and teaching I like cooking, watching movies, and playing all sorts of video games.

Mark completed his Ph.D. in philosophy under the supervision of Robert Pasnau. Mark's work focuses on the history of epistemology and its intersection with philosophy of religion. His interests in epistemology regard belief control, epistemic or doxastic obligations, rationality, testimony, the social epistemology of science, and the nature and status of faith. I also have interests in philosophy of science, medieval philosophy and logic. He is currently working on two major projects. The first is a treatment of John Locke's theory of rational probable belief. The second concerns the role of faith in the social epistemology of science.