Faculty, Staff, and Volunteers

FACULTY

L. Dwayne Estes, Ph.D.      

(Director, Associate Professor)

Dr. Estes (Associate Professor) serves as director and curator of APSC and is actively involved in the description of several new vascular plant species, the Flora of Tennessee Project,  numerous floristic/taxonomic studies, and directing student research in botany.

Email: estesL@apsu.edu                        

Phone: (931) 221-7771

Personal Webpage 

Edward W. Chester Ph.D.   

(Professor Emeritus)

Dr. Chester retired as curator of APSC but is still very active. He is leading the Flora of Tennessee Project and is still active in botanical research. His research interests include floristics of Tennessee with emphasis on northwestern Middle Tennessee, taxonomy of Halesia (Styracaceae), and floristic ecology of the Pennyroyal Plain Barrens.

Email: chestere@apsu.edu                      

Phone: (931) 221-7785

Personal Webpage  

STAFF & Graduate Research Assistants

Rob Shepard

Collections Manager

Rob oversees many of the day-to-day operations of the Herbarium (mounting, filing, databasing, loan requests) and the work of the undergraduates and volunteers. While working at APSC he has also conducted research on the community ecology of Western Highland Rim Barrens. He is interested in pursuing graduate work in dendrochronology.

Personal Webpage

Kelly Anderson

Native Plant Teaching & Research Garden Manager

Kelly is new grad student at APSU who  officially join my lab in August 2012. She will be conducting a floristic ecology study of rare cobble bar communities associated with rivers on the southern Cumberland Plateau. She also has strong interests in native plant propagation and sustainable native plant landscaping and serves as manager of the APSU Native Plant Teaching & Research Garden.

Personal Webpage

Mason Brock

GRA, (1st Yr Grad Student)

Mason is a new grad student who started in my lab in June 2012. He earned his B.S. from Eastern Kentucky University in May 2012. He has been independently studying botany since age 12. For his thesis he will study the flora and vegetation of rare Cumberland Plateau Cobble Bars of the Caney Fork River system in east-central Tennessee.

Personal Webpage

Matt S. Bruton

(Master's Candidate, Dec. 2012)

Matt is a master’s student working on a survey of the vascular flora of the 18,000-acre Clarks River National Wildlife Refuge in western Kentucky. 

Personal Webpage

Rebecca Johnson

(2nd Yr Grad Student)

Rebecca is a graduate student working on the systematics of the Gratiola nana species complex of Australia and New Zealand. She will be conducting a morphological investigation of this group.

Personal Webpage

Dawn York

(Master's Candidate, Dec. 2012)

Dawn is a master’s student working on mapping invasive species and developing an invasive species management plant for the Ocoee River Gorge, in Polk County, TN. She is employed as a botanist with Civil & Environmental Consultants, Inc. in Cincinatti, OH. Recently she also worked in the environmental division at Fort Campbell Military Base. Dawn is very interested in field botany, wetlands, fire ecology, and environmental education.

Personal Webpage 

FORMER GRADUATE STUDENTS (GRADUATED) 

Tianita Duke, M.S.                  

(Graduated May 2010)

Tianita graduated from APSU in August 2010. For her research, she investigated the distribution, ecology, and morphology of a new species of Lysimachia that is endemic to southern middle Tennessee and northern Alabama. She currently works as a lab coordinator in the Biology Department at Jackson State Community College, Jackson, TN.

Courtney Gorman, M.S.            

(graduated Aug 2012)

Courtney conducted her graduate work on the “Taxonomy, Ecology, and Biogeography of Polymnia canadensis” She is currently a first-year PhD student in the Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee where she is workingin the Genes to Ecosystems Lab. She is particularly interested in narrowly endemic plant species. 

Personal Webpage

Clea Klagstad, M.S.

(graduated, May 2012)

Clea conducted her graduate research on the floristics and vegetation of the 20,000-acre Cheatham Wildlife Management Area on the Western Highland Rim in Cheatham County, TN. She accepted a position as botanist for the University of Montana's Montana Natural Heritage Program where she started in June 2012. For MNHP she conducts floristic and vegetation research in high-elevation riparian and wetland communities and works on GIS tasks when she is not in the field.

Personal Webpage

Kim Norton, M.S.                     

(Graduated Aug. 2010)

Kim graduated from APSU in August 2010. For her thesis, she conducted a floristic ecology study of wetlands associated with limestone cedar glades of central Tennessee, northern Alabama, and southern Kentucky. She currently works as a botanist for the Botanical Research Institute of Texas in Fort Worth. 

 HERBARIUM ASSISTANT

Justin Beaty  

(senior)

Justin works in the herbarium a few days each week. He mounts and files specimens. Justin is majoring in biology and also getting his teaching certificate. After graduation he plans to teach high school science in either a rural or inner-city school system.

HERBARIUM VOLUNTEERS

The APSU Herbarium is fortunate to have many volunteers who unselfishly donate their time to help conduct the day-to-day operations necessary for the herbarium to maintain its high level of productivity in research and outreach. The following volunteers actively work in the herbarium performing tasks including specimen databasing and imaging, mounting, filing, cleaning, and greenhouse and garden maintenance. Their help is truly appreciated.

Stephen Smith

Stephen is a freshman at Todd County Central High School in Elkton, Kentucky. He wants to pursue a career in botany. Currently, Stephen is an active breeder of Daylily (Hemerocallis). He also has a very strong interest in endangered and narrowly endemic species. Stephen lists his heroes as Emma Lucy Braun, John Kunkel Small, Augustin Gattinger, and Asa Gray. He volunteers in the APSU Herbarium every Friday where he assists with filing specimens and the development of the "Plant of the Week" bulletin board.

Tyler Watson      

Tyler is a biology major. He works in the herbarium several hours per week. He is responsible for processing cedar glade specimens from the Southeastern U.S. recently donated to APSC by Drs. Jerry and Carol Baskin (Univ. of KY).