Dr. Joseph D. White received both undergraduate and Master's degrees from the Texas Christian University in Biology and is a certified for secondary educator for the state of Texas. He was awarded the doctoral degree in 1996 from the University of Montana's School of Forestry for his research on global climate change impacts on alpine environments derived from satellite information and computer modeling. In 1997, Dr. White received a post-doctoral appointment from Landcare Research in New Zealand to assess national carbon storage in indigenous forests as part of the New Zealand's international commitment to the Kyoto Protocol for climate change mitigation. Following this post-doctoral position, he joined the faculty of the Department of Biology as Assistant Professor at Baylor University. He, along with other colleagues in Biology, Geology, and Environmental Studies, formed The Institute for Ecological, Earth, and Environmental Sciences (TIE3S) at Baylor in 2005 to foster interdisciplinary work, research, and education on global environmental issues. He currently holds the positions of Professor of Biology and Director/Graduate Program Director of TIE3S. His present research topics include watershed and reservoir nutrient dynamics, fire risk in conservation lands, and woody plant-water relationships. As a life-long student of the natural world, his deepest passion is to understand how things work at their most fundamental level following in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, "No one can love something unknown."