William Oakley, PhD

William Oakley, PhD 

Pritchards Island Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow

Room 103, Grayson House

801 Carteret St

Beaufort, SC 29902

Office: 843-521-3113

william.oakley@uscb.edu

CV_Oakley.pdf

I am a postdoctoral teaching fellow in the Department of Natural Sciences at the University of South Carolina Beaufort, where I teach courses in biology and human anatomy and physiology. During my time at USCB, I will be designing and carrying out a local field research program that focuses on the birds’ usage of Pritchards Island and nearby barrier and sea islands, with a particular emphasis on migratory shorebirds, wintering salt marsh songbirds, and resident wading birds. I am an ornithologist and broadly trained ecologist, with research interests that span the fields of movement, population, conservation, and behavioral landscape ecology. For my Ph.D. dissertation research (University of Oklahoma), I combined field experiments, demographic modeling, and sea-level rise projections to better understand how wintering populations of tidal marsh sparrows in South Carolina may respond to environmental change over the next 75 years. Before joining USCB, I served as a postdoctoral researcher at New Mexico State University, where I taught wildlife ecology and natural resources management while supporting graduate student projects and contributing to existing avian ecology research.

I enjoy mentoring students, supporting undergraduate research, and exploring connections between science and conservation. Outside of academia, I love playing guitar and mandolin, reading, watching movies, birding, and spending time at the beach and in the southern Appalachian Mountains.