Philosophy
Students don’t have to aspire to a career in academia for a class in Sensory Biology, Animal Behavior, or Behavioral Ecology to be useful and engaging to them. Rather, my goal as a teacher of biology is to show students that scientific training can benefit them regardless of their dream career. I facilitate learning using a combination of lecture, labs, primary literature, and independent projects to emphasize scientific concepts, while simultaneously emphasizing to students the transferrable skills they can learn through a scientific education. In any science classroom, we are uniquely placed to guide students as they learn to critically observe the world, collect, evaluate, and synthesize evidence, draw conclusions, give and receive peer reviews, properly cite sources of information, and effectively convey information to others.
Experience
My teaching experience began as a sophomore Teaching Assistant for General Chemistry lab at Pomona College, which inspired an interest in teaching others that I have built on since. As a graduate student at Duke University, I have had teaching opportunities in several forms. First, I have mentored five undergraduates through independent research and thesis projects. Second, I have been a repeat guest lecturer Animal Physiology, Behavioral Ecology, Animal Signaling, and Sensory Biology. Each of these experiences has exposed me to different students—from freshmen to upper-level—and class style, from small discussion-based course to large lecture hall. Third, I have received two teaching grants related to curriculum development. The first, through the Duke Data Expeditions Program, provided funds to develop lesson plans that teach the “R” coding language and data analysis to undergraduates. The second, through the Duke Support for Interdisciplinary Graduate Networks, developed a program that paired STEM graduate students with Masters of Arts in Teaching students to create lesson plans for K-12 classrooms based on real research.
My teaching experience at Duke culminated in acting as Instructor of Record in a summer session course (Sensory Biology: Taste, Touch, Sound, Sight, Smell, and Beyond; see syllabus), which I designed and taught myself. This sixteen-student, introductory-level course covered the mechanisms underlying human and animal sensory systems, as well as evolution and diversification of sensory systems and sensory ecology. Information received through sensory systems impacts every aspect of daily life for both humans and animals, making the study of sensory biology relevant to students interested in pursuing medical or basic science careers. The study of sensory biology requires a firm grasp of everything from the mechanisms of sensory systems, to cell-cell signaling, to whole-organism topics such as behavior and ecology. I had my students read, evaluate, and discuss primary literature in class, interact with sensory biologists through guest lectures, engage in lab activities each day, and complete two projects—a literature review and a project proposal. At the end of the semester, one student said, “Taking this class made me feel confident in exploring science in the future” (Bio190S evaluations).
Methodology
I believe in being transparent with students about the reasoning behind my teaching practices. To this end, I spend the first day of class going over the syllabus in detail, to connect aspects of the coursework to real-life skills that go beyond the classroom. For example, through peer review, students learn to give and receive effective feedback; through scientific writing and presentations, students learn the importance of citing sources properly; by completing assignments in various formats (e.g. written reports, spoken presentations, etc.), students gain experience with various ways to present their work, useful skills in any career. Students in my Sensory Biology course said that the projects provided “good training for me to speak in front of a class,” and “in learning how to write.” Lastly, on the first day of class, my students and I draw up a classroom contract, where students submit rules that govern the classroom. I work hard to ensure students feel safe and secure, so that they may engage intellectually and develop in ways that are important to them, as a person, a scientist, or both.
My courses engage students using tangible examples. Being able to see or touch a concrete example of a biological concept allows students learn how questions are formed, how hypotheses are developed and tested, and how results can be used to draw conclusions. In Sensory Biology, for example, students explored complex concepts through activities that used readily-available materials—I taught proprioception and kinaesthesia using balance exercises, sensory adaptation using cups of hot and cold water, sound localization using a cell phone and a yard stick, receptive fields using a ruler and a paper clip, and magnetoreception using some wire, a tube, and a pill bug. This use of familiar tools to teach new topics led one of my students to comment that other students would find my class interesting, “even if they aren’t interested in the topic” (Bio 190S evaluations).
Students don’t have to aspire to a career in academia for a class in Sensory Biology, Animal Behavior, or Behavioral Ecology to be useful and engaging to them. Rather, my goal as a teacher of biology is to show students that scientific training can benefit them regardless of their dream career. I facilitate learning using a combination of lecture, labs, primary literature, and independent projects to emphasize scientific concepts, while simultaneously emphasizing to students the transferrable skills they can learn through a scientific education. In any science classroom, we are uniquely placed to guide students as they learn to critically observe the world, collect, evaluate, and synthesize evidence, draw conclusions, give and receive peer reviews, properly cite sources of information, and effectively convey information to others.
Experience
My teaching experience began as a sophomore Teaching Assistant for General Chemistry lab at Pomona College, which inspired an interest in teaching others that I have built on since. As a graduate student at Duke University, I have had teaching opportunities in several forms. First, I have mentored five undergraduates through independent research and thesis projects. Second, I have been a repeat guest lecturer Animal Physiology, Behavioral Ecology, Animal Signaling, and Sensory Biology. Each of these experiences has exposed me to different students—from freshmen to upper-level—and class style, from small discussion-based course to large lecture hall. Third, I have received two teaching grants related to curriculum development. The first, through the Duke Data Expeditions Program, provided funds to develop lesson plans that teach the “R” coding language and data analysis to undergraduates. The second, through the Duke Support for Interdisciplinary Graduate Networks, developed a program that paired STEM graduate students with Masters of Arts in Teaching students to create lesson plans for K-12 classrooms based on real research.
My teaching experience at Duke culminated in acting as Instructor of Record in a summer session course (Sensory Biology: Taste, Touch, Sound, Sight, Smell, and Beyond; see syllabus), which I designed and taught myself. This sixteen-student, introductory-level course covered the mechanisms underlying human and animal sensory systems, as well as evolution and diversification of sensory systems and sensory ecology. Information received through sensory systems impacts every aspect of daily life for both humans and animals, making the study of sensory biology relevant to students interested in pursuing medical or basic science careers. The study of sensory biology requires a firm grasp of everything from the mechanisms of sensory systems, to cell-cell signaling, to whole-organism topics such as behavior and ecology. I had my students read, evaluate, and discuss primary literature in class, interact with sensory biologists through guest lectures, engage in lab activities each day, and complete two projects—a literature review and a project proposal. At the end of the semester, one student said, “Taking this class made me feel confident in exploring science in the future” (Bio190S evaluations).
Methodology
I believe in being transparent with students about the reasoning behind my teaching practices. To this end, I spend the first day of class going over the syllabus in detail, to connect aspects of the coursework to real-life skills that go beyond the classroom. For example, through peer review, students learn to give and receive effective feedback; through scientific writing and presentations, students learn the importance of citing sources properly; by completing assignments in various formats (e.g. written reports, spoken presentations, etc.), students gain experience with various ways to present their work, useful skills in any career. Students in my Sensory Biology course said that the projects provided “good training for me to speak in front of a class,” and “in learning how to write.” Lastly, on the first day of class, my students and I draw up a classroom contract, where students submit rules that govern the classroom. I work hard to ensure students feel safe and secure, so that they may engage intellectually and develop in ways that are important to them, as a person, a scientist, or both.
My courses engage students using tangible examples. Being able to see or touch a concrete example of a biological concept allows students learn how questions are formed, how hypotheses are developed and tested, and how results can be used to draw conclusions. In Sensory Biology, for example, students explored complex concepts through activities that used readily-available materials—I taught proprioception and kinaesthesia using balance exercises, sensory adaptation using cups of hot and cold water, sound localization using a cell phone and a yard stick, receptive fields using a ruler and a paper clip, and magnetoreception using some wire, a tube, and a pill bug. This use of familiar tools to teach new topics led one of my students to comment that other students would find my class interesting, “even if they aren’t interested in the topic” (Bio 190S evaluations).
From left to right: Students practice balance exercises to learn about proprioception and kinaesthesia; students use cups of hot/cold and salty/fresh water, as well as fruity markers, to learn about taste and olfactory adaptation; students used pill bugs and self-constructed pulse magnetizers to learn about magnetoreception and orientation.
Students today face unique challenges that I try to address as an educator. First, they must learn to use computers to analyze large datasets. Therefore, I introduce students to the “R” coding language, teaching them to upload, manipulate, analyze, and plot real datasets from sensory biology studies (see example lesson plan here). Although learning to code can be difficult and frustrating, students almost universally appreciate being taught these skills. Students in my Sensory biology course said, “It never occurred to me that I would need to learn how to code, but I am glad that I get to learn this,” and “It is my first time trying to code, and I think it is pretty interesting… I will try to use R to make plots in my future research.” Second, there are an overwhelming number of ways to access information, meaning it is vital that students receive guidance in evaluating evidence, synthesizing opposing viewpoints, and drawing conclusions. To aid students in acquiring these skills, I have students read primary literature, often two papers that present opposing findings, and discuss their thoughts with other students. During independent projects, I ask students to keep an “annotated bibliography” of all the sources they examined, whether or not they referenced it in the final report, so that they can practice explaining why or why not they believe a certain source is reliable.
Finally, I solicit feedback from my students many times throughout the semester; in fact, one student from my Sensory Biology class wrote that she was particularly grateful that I am “good at evaluating [my]self.” Students in my Sensory Biology course submitted daily “reflection memos,” in which they could reflect on any aspect of the day’s material. My students unanimously reported that they liked this practice—on a scale of 0 (disagree) to 100 (agree), students said that the reflection memos were useful (96) and helped them to learn the day’s lesson (98); in particular, it helped students “review and absorb knowledge,” “organize thoughts and questions about the day’s material,” and “evaluate [them]selves” (Bio190S evaluations).
Additionally, I perform “mid-semester” evaluations so that I can react to student opinion before the end of the course. At the end of the semester, I use comprehensive Student Evaluations (see Bio 190S evaluations) to track my progress as an instructor and identify ways to improve my teaching. For example, after teaching Sensory Biology, my students requested even more interactive time in class to discuss topics with classmates, wanted access to more primary literature that they could peruse on their own time if interested, and wanted longer quizzes to give them more opportunities to show what they had learned.
Developing as an Educator
I seek to improve my pedagogy with ongoing professional development. While at Duke University, I have pursued the Certificate in College Teaching, and have served as the Head Graduate Mentor for the University Scholars Program, coordinating mentoring activities for 120 undergraduate, professional, and graduate students. In 2017, I was awarded the Duke Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring, and have since served as a panel member during Duke’s Graduate Student Orientation Week.
My ultimate goal as an educator is to ensure that even students who will never go on to be biologists are able to think critically and assess and evaluate evidence for themselves. As I continue to develop as an educator, I hope to gain experience with a diversity of students and learning environments, from small classrooms to large, from lecture-based to laboratory-based, that will inform my teaching as I develop and teach my own original courses.