The Jean Andrews Centennial Visiting Professorship in Tropical and Economic Botany

Dr. Laura Burkle

BEE WILD! Stories of the Science and Conservation of Pollinators

Join the Department of Integrative Biology at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center for the 2018 Jean Andrews Lecture! A free reception, including science and conservation exhibits, activities, snacks, and native plant prizes, will be followed by a science talk about the fascinating world of pollinators and the work being done to protect them. The reception and talk are free and open to the public and all ages are encouraged to attend!  

11:30 a.m. – Reception with science activities, snacks, exhibits and prizes

1-2 p.m. – All-ages science talk on pollinators and how to protect them

Dr. Burkle’s research focuses on the biodiversity of complex communities of flowering plants and pollinators, and the pollination services they provide in both wildland and managed systems. She is especially interested in how plant-pollinator interactions vary across space and time as a result of environmental conditions—including climate change, land-use change, and disturbances like wildfire. 

Burkle is an Associate Professor of Ecology at Montana State University (MSU) in Bozeman. Before joining MSU as an Assistant Professor in 2011, she was a research fellow at Washington University in St. Louis studying how plant and pollinator interactions were affected by 120 years of human development and climate change. She received her PhD from the Ecology and Evolution program at Dartmouth College. 

The Jean Andrews Centennial Visiting Professorship in Tropical and Economic Botany is sponsored by The University of Texas at Austin Department of Integrative Biology and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Jean Andrews (1924-2010) graduated from UT Austin in 1944 with a Bachelor of Science degree in home economics and later became a patron of the Plant Biology program. She completed her Master’s degree in 1966 at Texas A&M University and received a Ph.D. in art from North Texas State University in 1976. Andrews was inducted into the College's Hall of Honor in 1991. Her support of the Graduate Program in Plant Biology and the Department of Integrative Biology continues through an endowment she established for the Jean Andrews Visiting Faculty Fellowship that brings a scholar in tropical or economic botany to UT each year. She was awarded the Distinguished Alumna award by the University of North Texas at Denton in 1991 and by UT Austin in 1997.