I’m very excited to be joining the Hampden-Sydney community. I grew up in central Virginia some time ago. Since then I’ve wandered pretty far afield: I studied plant ecology and evolution for my graduate degrees, wandering around the southern Sierra Nevada mountain ranges in California. Afterwards, I taught at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, which sharpened my respect for the benefits of a tight-knit community and small classes to promote excellence in education and mentor-ship in the sciences. Most recently I have been working with a group of scientists at Stony Brook University in New York who are studying the causes and consequences of invasive species appearing in New York ecosystems, as they are throughout the world. We’ve been trying to get a handle on the forces that may be responsible for the rapid replacement of old, established species and communities with new species. These new characters on the stage are typically ones that have been introduced by human activities. Our concern lies not just with the change itself but with its pace. The rapidity of community displacement raises similar concerns to other aspects of change we see in the biological world, since this pace of change is greater than that which many biological systems are accustomed. My work in New York has been thrilling and took me to beautiful locations in the Adirondacks, the largest state park in the United States. Although the views in New York and the Sierras were striking, I have rarely seen more beautiful sites than in the mountains of Virginia, and I am excited to apply the things I’ve learned here in and around Hampden-Sydney, and look forward to sharing that experience with you all.

Dr. Lowry in the field doing work on invasive species