Rate My Professor Will Wetzel

William C. Wetzel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences at Montana State University, where he joined in 2023. He earned his Ph.D. in Population Biology from the University of California, Davis in 2015 and a B.A. with Highest Honors in Biology and Environmental Studies from Williams College in 2006. Prior to Montana State, Wetzel held positions as Assistant Professor and later Associate Professor at Michigan State University from 2017 to 2023, affiliated with departments including Integrative Biology, Entomology, Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, and the Plant Resilience Institute, as well as an adjunct role at Kellogg Biological Station. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Departments of Entomology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University from 2015 to 2016.

Wetzel's research specializes in plant-herbivore interactions and plant-insect ecology, examining how biological diversity, climate variability, and environmental heterogeneity shape these dynamics and tritrophic interactions. He founded the Herbivory Variability Network (HerbVar), coordinating over 200 scientists from more than 100 institutions across six continents to collect over 900 plant-insect interaction surveys for global analyses. His scholarship includes over 48 peer-reviewed publications in leading journals such as Science, Nature, and the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, with key works including "Variability in Plant–Herbivore Interactions" (Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 2023) and contributions to understanding heat wave effects on crop-pest interactions (Ecosphere, 2024). Wetzel has secured over $2.3 million in external funding since 2020, including NSF Research Coordination Network grants and multiple USDA NIFA awards. His honors include the Fulbright Specialist Fellowship (2022) for work on plant-insect interactions hosted by the Spanish National Research Council and the James and Mary Ross Provost’s Award for Excellence (2026), recognizing his innovative teaching in courses like Principles of Living Systems and inquiry-based projects that engage students in environmental science research.