I'm Abbey and this is
my story.

I am a disabled, female scientist that is part of the LGBTQIA+ community. As such, I am incredibly interested in matters of social justice and diversity, equity, and inclusion in the classroom, laboratory, and academia as a whole.

The first time I was discouraged from pursuing my interest in insects and spiders was when I began attending public school at age 5. I was quickly targeted by my teachers in elementary school, many of whom felt the need to discuss my "abnormal social development" with my parents at conferences and encourage them to get me to "play dress up with the other girls". These experiences persisted as I grew up and continued on my educational journey interested in arthropods - something I was repeatedly told girls weren't supposed to be playing with. Despite my formal educators actively discouraging me from pursuing my personal interests in the sciences, I am privileged enough to have an incredibly supportive family who encouraged me to continue looking at creepy crawlies - eventually culminating in a B.S. in Biology from St. Mary's College of California in 2016 and a Ph.D. in Entomology from Washington State University in 2021.

My experiences of being discriminated against for my interest in Entomology as a queer, disabled woman has galvanized my belief in humanistic mentorship and inclusive education - the fundamental pedagogies I live my academic life based upon both inside and outside of the classroom. I am particularly passionate about inclusive K-12 outreach resulting in my founding and curating a living arthropod collection and serving as Outreach Coordinator for the WSU Entomology Department during my time there. Additionally, I am involved in running an online Insect Identification resource geared towards the public with more than 60,000 members form around the globe. Undergraduate education is another special interest of mine - creating inclusive and engaging classroom experiences for diverse groups of students is incredibly rewarding and I was privileged to be able to design a curriculum aimed at engaging non-science majors in entomology.

I am currently a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Connecticut hosted in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department where I am again getting to have a day to day impact on student lives and education by assisting in the development of a progressive commitment course aimed at building a learning community amongst diverse undergraduate students in the sciences. At the end of this course the cohort of students rotate out to labs of their choices to perform independent research using the lab techniques and theory learned in the classroom, ensuring they will be able to continue to pursue a career in science. Perhaps more importantly though, the design of this course aims to provide inclusive community support for this diverse group of science students, encouraging them to pursue whatever aspect of science interests them no matter what gender, sex, orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, etc. they are - just as my family was able to do for me all of those years ago.