Eric Griffin, Ph.D

My Story

I knew even as a college student that I wanted to teach at a small liberal arts school like Warren Wilson. I enjoyed small class sizes, great interactions with my professors, and personal attention that allowed me to succeed in my own academic career, and I wanted to one day positively impact students from the other side of the coin. I fell in love with forest ecology and ecosystem dynamics in college, and I ended up working in tropical rainforests as a graduate student, Eastern deciduous forests as a postdoctoral fellow, as well as conifer forests out west as an Assistant Professor. However, I was finally pulled back into the southern Appalachians where I call home, close to where I grew up in northeast Georgia. The Warren Wilson College Forest is a truly unique resource to teach students about forest concepts and applications that will hopefully make them better-informed citizens and land stewards regardless of their chosen career paths.