Brian Crother

For this year’s recipient of the President’s Award for Excellence in Research, winning the award is actually like déjà vu. That is because Professor of Biological Sciences Brian Crother also received the award in 1999.

“When Dr. Crother received this award roughly 20 years ago, he was one of many great researchers. Now he is simply an institution,” said Professor and Department Head of Biological Sciences Christopher Beachy. “He organizes symposia, has served as president of multiple societies, and his numbers of publications, both empirical and theoretical, grows larger each year.”

A member of the Southeastern faculty since 1991, Crother’s areas of expertise are herpetology, phylogenetics, systematics, and biogeography. Simply put, he studies mostly snakes and lizards, their relationships, and how their distributions are influenced by historical contingency and environmental effects.

Crother has published 135 papers, and his work has been cited over 4,400 times. In 2019 alone, his papers were cited in nearly 400 other papers.

Graduate student mentoring has also been a significant part of Crother’s research career. He believes the research experience between advisor and graduate student is a reciprocal one.

“The students learn from me, and I learn from the students,” he explained. “I teach a number of graduate courses, have been the faculty advisor of 33 graduate students, and have served on another 57 graduate committees and seven doctoral committees across the country.

“My commitment to teaching through research is, to me, one of the best reasons to conduct research,” he added. “I believe active scholars bring something extra to the classroom or any teaching situation.”