J. Anthony Stallins Associate Professor Graduate Program Director Department of Geography Florida State University
		My current research investigates how biogeomorphic interactions mold patterns of plant species composition and diversity. The overarching goal of this field-based, theoretically-grounded research is to articulate and test hypotheses about how complex systems interactions shape biogeographic patterns. Along a more applied research track, I am conducting GIS-based research to investigate how urban areas in the southeastern U.S. modify patterns of precipitation and lightning. As a geographer, I value a range of geographic scholarship, and have background research interests in animal geography (the cultural and ethical aspects of sharing space with animals), and in the geographical themes underlying apiculture (beekeeping) and pollination services. As a mentor for graduate students, I pursue a range of research along the human-environment continuum, from the topics above, to rural sustainability, landscape ecology, and forest dynamics. My overarching goal as an academic is to maintain a balance between research, teaching, and service. Output-oriented research creates an arms race whereby learning, reflection, and the practice of knowledge production becomes more process than product, especially for the students we are entrusted to mentor and the departments we are to collectively administer. Academics have a responsibility to return (incrementally) their profession to a more intimate, humanistic enterprise, and away from the factory model. I am a pragmatist in my academic outlook. Pragmatism, in its philosophical sense, implies that no one educational background, methodological perspective, or research style should serve as the sole model to uphold. Tensions -- description versus prediction, nomethetic versus idiographic, for example -- in how we do research are part of the generative process that keeps research vigorous. But there is no specific template, only the contingencies of our training and experiences that intersect with the research culture around us. A pragmatic approach reminds us that we should cultivate our students to be playful and resourceful thinkers rather than dogmatic pundits.
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