Russ Butler, PhD

Dr. Russ Butler is Professor of biology and Director of the Center for Population Health in the Department of Health and Biomedical Sciences at AdventHealth University. His teaching specialties include general biology, the interaction of science and religion (Issues in Science and Religion), human/urban ecology and senior seminar courses. His research interests include Human Public and Population Health, spatial analysis of tissue structure and environmental determinants of environmental and human health. These interests have resulted in understanding the relationship of avian diversity as function of urban versus natural landscapes; the distributions of immune cells with in Tuberculosis granuloma; life-expectancy models; disease hotspot analyses; or the extent of high Iron concentrations in a community’s drinking water, for examples. Additionally, he as research interests in educational methods for science teaching in higher education. Furthermore, he has scholarly interest in building an amenable partnership between science and religion; with his “72,000, what do I do with this?” lecture in Issues in Science and Religion becoming a student favorite of an example of religion and science working together. He earned his B.A. in geography at the University of New Orleans and followed that with a Ph.D. in biology from Vanderbilt University. From there he accepted a post-doctoral fellowship with the School of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan as well as later becoming a lecturer in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UofM. Since his tenure at AHU, Dr. Butler has acquired over $20,000 of extramural funding for the Center, was awarded the AHU Merit Award for Scholarship (2011), published research findings, re-designed and developed new courses and has mentored many students: he has written over 100 letters of recommendation, for example. Of ten students who have worked in the Center, seven either have completed or are completing graduate-school work (e.g., Physician Assistant, MD/DO., Public Health), one has been named the 2018 AHU Newman Civic Fellow Awardee and has presented at multiple local, national and international conferences.