Dr. Walters named interim director for the Women’s Research Center

Dr. Tony Waldrop announced that Dr. Linda Walters will serve as interim director for the Women’s Research Center.

Dr. Walters has worked at UCF for 14 years and is currently a professor in the Department of Biology. As a marine conservation biologist, her research focus is human impacts in the marine environment. Dr. Walters, her students, and colleagues also run a large outreach campaign to promote environmental stewardship that includes producing three children’s books, annual workshops for dozens of local educators, and mobilizing over 20,000 volunteers in oyster reef restoration and shoreline stabilization projects.

Dr. Walters began incorporating service-learning into her STEM courses in 2009. Currently all of her marine biology courses participate in service-learning with local Pre-K to 12th grade classrooms. She recently received the 2011 Florida Campus Compact Service-Learning Faculty Award for the state university sector and the William A. Niering Outstanding Educator of the Year award from the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation.

Dr. Walters earned her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina. Upon completing her Ph.D., post-doctoral fellowships led her to the University of Hawaii; Cochin University of Science and Technology in Cochin, India; and Laval University in Quebec City, Canada.

Dr. Walters will continue to teach and do research in biology while serving as interim director for the Women’s Research Center.