Biography: Dr. Valerie Staton Matthews, Associate Professor of Psychology and Biopsychology, specializes in the study of animal behavior. 

Her early training was in primate behavior with Douglas Candland at Bucknell University and with Dorothy Fragaszy and Irwin Bernstein at the University of Georgia. Her doctoral dissertation focused on aggression in domestic ferrets.

More recently, Dr. Matthews has been working with the Arizona Game and Fish Department to monitor the wild population of North American Black-footed Ferrets. 

These ferrets are the descendants of captive-bred ferrets that were released into the wild in an attempt to restore this nearly extinct species. Students have travelled with Dr. Matthews to Arizona to volunteer on the black-footed ferret project.