University of North Texas 
The UNT College of Science is pleased to welcome Jenny Gnau to the Biological Sciences department as their newest Instructional Laboratory Supervisor. Jenny completed her MS degree at UNT in 2017 studying aquatic toxicology and spent seven years after graduate school teaching Environmental Science at Collin College.
“As a graduate student here, I was given the opportunity to be a teaching assistant
and discovered my love for teaching,” said Jenny. “I decided to return to UNT because
I love the dynamic culture this university offers students, and I enjoy interacting
with students and colleagues from many different backgrounds.”
As part of her new position at UNT, Jenny is excited to be designing and monitoring the environmental science classes for non-science majors. “I feel like this is a great opportunity to make an impact on students who may not have received a lot of exposure to environmental science and are unaware of all the ways they impact and are impacted by their environment,” she said.
Jenny began her own journey in science at The University of Central Arkansas (UCA) where she studied aquatic ecology. Since then, her research interests have aligned with agriculture science, specifically permaculture design and sustainable philosophies.
“Permaculture science is a way of valuing and preserving resources with the intent that a self-sustaining system evolves,” said Jenny. “I feel that adopting permaculture principles into our social, economic, and political environments could help guide societies to live more sustainable lives. I hope to one day develop a small permaculture design program and potentially get UNT more involved with North Texas farmers.”
While Jenny remains interested in ecology and toxicology, she has also spent the past few years researching philosophy, psychology, and religious studies and is considering seeking an additional degree in therapy.
“Since the COVID pandemic it has been hard to ignore the influx of mental health issues related to the state of our environment and sustainability of resources,” she said. “I would be interested in using my background in environmental science to focus on persons suffering from such mental health issues.”
Jenny also said that being back at UNT has the added bonus of being about to experience many musical performances. “Music is so important to my life and randomly walking upon a group of musicians practicing is a treasure for me,” she shared. “One unusual thing about me is that I played the violin long ago and I’d secretly like to fiddle in a folk band...one day!”