Students easily appreciate vultures and badgers once they value venomous snakes, so I use a "flagship" rattlesnake with an unusual background in all my classes. Fifteen years ago I found him basking on the rock wall of a daycare center, surrounded by curious children. Every spring since then, with the local rattler coiled or crawling slowly nearby, I lecture about these remarkable animals. Like all snakes, rattlers flow over the ground without limbs. As vipers, they subdue, swallow, and digest prodigious meals; as pitvipers, they mix infrared images with more typical vertebrate vision. I point out that rattlesnakes possess one of the most dramatic warning devices in nature; they thrive amidst spectacular scenery, and North America would be less vibrant, more tame, without our "buzzworms." Never extravagant, these intricately specialized predators are beautiful in subtle, meticulous ways that emerge through lingering contemplation. Thus introduced to my reptilian companion, students who have been apprehensive about harmless frogs clamor for a closer look and implore me to show them rattlers on our field trips.

The conflicts between California's burgeoning population and wild countryside make relevancy in education both urgent and easy to achieve. Our biology classes help undergraduates understand these highly polarized issues, make informed decisions, and seek fulfilling careers. I lecture with the students' backgrounds and course objectives in mind, moving back and forth through those concerns. Dry skull bones are presented in terms of a snake swallowing prey; salamander distributions are related to Berkeley backyard habitats and Western landscapes; and East Bay parks are viewed in the context of regional history and development. I assess the students' level and briskly move beyond that, work hard at getting the subject right, and openly show them why a topic is important to me. I engage students in the discovery of knowledge by using intentionally provocative examples; by encouraging questions during lectures; and by drawing graduate student instructors into classroom discussions, especially when their expertise exceeds mine.

Research on reptile biology and conservation is important to my success as a teacher, and vice versa. Presenting recent research in classes adds a sense that we are all still learning, not just reviewing knowledge, and student response has been enthusiastic. Conversely, coursework and public lectures help me focus the broader context for specific research projects. Teaching and research should be partners in scholarship at Berkeley, and I look forward to our continued pursuit of that goal.