I am a 5th year graduate student, seeking a Ph.D in the Department of Political Science at Western Michigan University. Originally from Florida, my undergraduate career took me many different places, but I recieved my B.A. in political science from the University of Central Florida in 2003, and in 2006 received my M.A. from the same institution.

My research and teaching interests focus on placing the federal judiciary, primarily the United States Supreme Court, into the larger institutional structure of the federal government. To this end, my working dissertation, "A Rush to the Middle: Strategic Behavior in the Office of the Solicitor General," seeks to create a dynamic measure of ideology for the Office of the Solicitor General that is consistent with the Common Space and Judicial Common Space scores through a Bayesian IRT model.