McElhinney

How do you teach marine biology in a land-locked state?

You have to think outside of the box, just like University of Mount Union professor Dr. Amy McElhinney did.

“I had to get creative in how to expose students to marine habitats,” said McElhinney.

What did she do?

Drawing on Mount Union’s robust alumni base in Florida, she partnered with the Alumni Office and the Office of University Advancement to develop an extended field trip experience where students from her class explore parts of the entire coastline of Florida.

McElhinney will take the audience on an in-depth virtual field trip experience when she presents “Sea the Future: Engaging College Students in Marine Biology,” a One Book One Community program, on Tuesday, March 3 at 7 p.m. A 20-year scuba diver, she will also share some stories of her interactions with cephalopod molluscs.

The lecture is being held ahead of a visit to Alliance by author Sy Montgomery, who wrote the 2026 One Book One Community selection, “The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness.”

McElhinney, who grew up in Tipton, Iowa, a small farming town in East-central Iowa, earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Wartburg College where I majored in biology. She later earned a master’s degree in biology from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington where she studied phylogenetics of the Xanthophyte algae.

McElhinney was employed as a coastal environmental educator with Carolina Ocean Studies and worked as an adjunct instructor at Miller Motte Technical College and served as lab manager in a research lab at UNCW for one year after completing her degree. She then went on to earn a doctorate from Indiana University in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology and studied the evolutionary developmental biology of pluteus arms in a species of Australian sea urchin.

Immediately after completing her doctorate, she began instructing at the University of Mount Union where she teaches classes in molecular biology, marine biology, developmental biology, sustainability, non-majors biology, introductory cell & molecular biology for majors, and First Year Seminar in the Integrative Core.

McElhinney has been at Mount for 15 years and holds the titles of Associate Professor, Campus Sustainability Coordinator, and the Charles S. Gallaher Endowed Chair in Biology.

Her current research interests center on the regenerative abilities of brittle stars, ocean acidification impacts on echinoderms, and developmental biology studies of a variety of vertebrates and invertebrates.

She regularly takes students on an extended field trip to Florida where they receive first-hand experience in as many marine habitats as the group can explore during its travels.