Julie Stahlhut
Posts: 46
Joined: July 2005
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Well, let's see. Against my better judgment, I'll join this thread. 
Undergrad: B.S. (1979) in Materials Science and Engineering (MIT), including courses in thermodynamics, solid mechanics, metallurgical and ceramic science, and the usual math and physics courses. Being an engineering major made me realize that I really should have been a biologist, something I didn't pursue until some years later. Incidentally, I didn't study evolution at all as an engineering major, for the same reason that most biologists don't take a course in metallurgy. I believe that MIT has since instituted a life-sciences requirement for all students, but this requirement was not in place in the 1970s. However, I do understand and remember enough about thermodynamics to recognize the old claim that "evolution violates the second law" as complete nonsense. That's the single specific contribution that my engineering education made to my later study of evolutionary biology.
Graduate: M.S. (1994) and Ph.D. (2002) in Biological Sciences (Western Michigan University). I took courses in entomology (my main interest), systematic botany, invertebrate zoology, ornithology, physical anthropology, biochemistry, genetics, animal and plant physiology, population ecology, evolution, prokaryotic and eukaryotic cell biology, animal behavior, and statistics. I also took some specialized entomology and cognate courses at Michigan State, as well as a seminar in philosophy of science. My M.S. research project was in chemical ecology; my Ph.D. dissertation described an unusual adaptation to inbreeding in a solitary wasp species, as shown by a field study, multiple breeding experiments, and genetic testing. The latter yielded three publications plus a couple of technical notes.
I'm currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Rochester, where I study insect-<i>Wolbachia</i> interactions. (<i>Wolbachia</i> are bacteria that infect insects and are usually transmitted vertically -- from mother to offspring -- and use a variety of mechanisms to skew the sex ratio of an infected mother's offspring for the bacteria's own benefit.)
So far, to paraphrase the late Prof. Dobzhansky, it all makes sense in the light of evolution.
And I also know how to spell "credentials". 
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