Chrissy Spencer is an evolutionary biologist and biology education researcher. She teaches introductory, core, and elective courses in evolution, ecology, genetics, math models, and teaching assistant training, and has won several awards for teaching. An inaugural NSF Evolving the Culture of Biology Scholar, she promotes teaching assistant professional development to foster inclusion, efficacy, and evidence-based practices in part through courses co-developed with the Center for Teaching and Learning. She is a co-author of the education resource (OER) textbook BioPrinciples; her research examines the use and efficacy of OER.
Publications
Spencer C, Angra A, Dósa K, and Jones A. “Undergraduate Learning Gains and Learning Efficiency in a Focused Open Education Resource.” Research Articles. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning (Athabasca, Canada) 26, no. 2 (2025): 184–204. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v26i2.8117.
Angra A, Ng SL, Onstine A, Spencer CC. 2020. Trapping Fruit Flies: A Guided Inquiry Laboratory Approach to Teaching Non-Biology Majors. American Biology Teacher 82(6): 403-408. https://doi.org/10.1525/abt.2020.82.6.403
Spencer CC, Harrison CD. 2018. Designing course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) Labs with Citizen Science and Service Learning. Proceedings of the Association for Biology Laboratory Education, 39:17.
Wang A, Sharp N, Spencer CC, Tedman KA, Agrawal AF. 2009. Selection, epistasis, and parent-of-origin effects on deleterious mutations across environments in Drosophila melanogaster. American Naturalist.
Spencer CC, Tyerman J, Bertrand, M, Doebeli M. 2008. Adaptation increases the likelihood of diversification in an experimental bacterial lineage. Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences 105:1585–1589 (direct submission).
Tyerman J, Spencer CC, Bertrand M, & Doebeli M. 2008. Experimental demonstration of ecological character displacement in Escherichia coli. BMC Evolutionary Biology 8:34.
Le Gac M, Brazas M, Bertrand M, Tyerman J, Spencer CC, Hancock R, & Doebeli M. 2008. Metabolic changes associated with adaptive diversification in Escherichia coli. Genetics 178:1049–1060.
Spencer CC, Saxer G, Travisano M, Doebeli M. 2007. Seasonal resource oscillations maintain diversity in a dimorphic bacterial population. Evolutionary Ecology Research 9:775–787.
Spencer CC, Bertrand M, Travisano M, and Doebeli M. 2007. Adaptive diversification in genes regulating resource use in Escherichia coli. PLoS Genetics 3:e15. doi:10.1371.
Spencer CC, Promislow DEL (2005) Age-specific changes in epistatic effects on mortality rate in Drosophila melanogaster. Journal of Heredity 96:513–521.
Spencer CC, Howell CE, Wright AR, Promislow DEL (2003) Testing an 'aging gene' in long-lived Drosophila strains: Increased longevity depends on sex and genetic background. Aging Cell 2: 123.
Spencer CC, Neigel JE, Leberg PL (2000) Experimental evaluation of the usefulness of microsatellite DNA for detecting demographic bottlenecks. Molecular Ecology 9, 1517–1528.
Spencer CC, Chlan CA, Neigel JE, Scribner KT, Wooten MC, Leberg PL (1999) Polymorphic microsatellite markers in the western mosquitofish, Gambusia affinis. Molecular Ecology 8, 157–158.
