Biology professor publishes pioneering textbook

Adjunct Professor of Biology Jim Berry is publishing a textbook entitled Environment, Science, and Law.

Berry earned his bachelor’s degree in biology in 1970 and his master’s degree in 1973 at Florida State University before pursuing his doctorate at the University of Utah in environmental biology. While teaching biology at Elmhurst University in Illinois, Berry attended law school at Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology, graduating in 1990. After briefly leaving the world of higher education to practice environmental law in Florida, Berry returned to Illinois and the biology classroom at Elmhurst. “I really missed teaching and academics,” said Berry. “I am a scientist; I always have been.” Putting his recent legal experience to good use, Berry simultaneously began teaching law at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

With this unique professional and academic experience, Berry retired to Charleston in 2017 to be near his daughter and joined The Citadel as an adjunct professor in the department of biology, where he developed a natural science course in the citizenship strand called Biology, Environment and Law, a class combining multiple disciplines. “What I wanted was to develop a course that was half environmental biology and half environmental law, literally half and half,” said Berry. “You can find environmental science courses all over the country that sprinkle in a little bit of environmental law, and environmental law courses that sprinkle in a little bit of environmental science, but nothing that’s truly both.”

Shortly after he began teaching the course at The Citadel in 2020, Berry began facing the challenges of teaching an unconventional subject. “The problem that I had from the beginning is there were no textbooks for this because it’s a unique kind of course,” said Berry. “It dawned on me—‘why don’t I just write a textbook?’” That’s exactly what Berry did, combining years of resources and experience into a textbook set for publication in January.

Berry plans to donate the proceeds of the book to the biology department through The Citadel Foundation. “They have been very supportive of me. It’s just a wonderful biology department,” said Berry. “If there’s something I can do to thank them for that kind support, I want to do it.”