Rate My Professor Alden Griffith

Alden Griffith is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Department Chair at Wellesley College. He earned a B.A. in Biology from Wesleyan University in 2001 and a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2008, where his dissertation examined biotic and climatic factors influencing the high-elevation invasion of Bromus tectorum in the Great Basin. Griffith has been at Wellesley since 2008, initially as Post-doctoral Botany Fellow in the Botanic Gardens, teaching in the Environmental Studies Program and Biological Sciences Department from 2008 to 2011. He was appointed Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies in 2011 and promoted to Associate Professor.

Primarily a plant ecologist, Griffith investigates how environmental factors and biological interactions drive plant population dynamics, with emphasis on biological invasions by nonnative species and quantitative methods such as integral projection models linking population dynamics to physiological and environmental drivers. Ongoing projects include the role of resource supply in the demographic success of invasive Persicaria lapathifolia at the Boston Area Climate Experiment, invasion potential of Bromus tectorum in east coast dune systems at Cape Cod National Seashore, and population consequences of plant facilitation for Smelowskia calycina in Glacier National Park. His lab functions as a campus center for environmental analysis, processing soil nutrient samples for the Botanic Gardens and courses. Griffith has published extensively in leading journals including Ecology, Oecologia, New Phytologist, and Journal of Ecology, with key works such as "Demography beyond the population" (Journal of Ecology, 2016; 105 citations), "Positive effects of native shrubs on Bromus tectorum demography" (Ecology, 2010; 104 citations), "The temperature responses of soil respiration in deserts: a seven desert synthesis" (Biogeochemistry, 2011; 143 citations), and "Differential daytime and night-time stomatal behavior in plants from North American deserts" (New Phytologist, 2012; 134 citations). He secured a National Science Foundation grant (RUI: Advancing the ecological niche through demography, #1655541, $473,977, 2017) and served as Distinguished Faculty Member at the Madeleine K. Albright Institute for Global Affairs (2011-2014). Griffith organized the British Ecological Society symposium "Demography Beyond the Population" (2015, Sheffield, UK) and guest-edited a cross-journal special feature. He teaches courses spanning environmental science fundamentals, resource use, conservation, field botany, plant diversity, and ecology.