Teaching

Teaching Philosophy and Education Goals 

Teaching is my passion. I love interacting with young minds and encouraging the process of mutual understanding and respect to develop over the course of a semester. In order to foster this type of environment I encourage my students to get to know each other on a somewhat personal level so that they can hold themselves accountable for participating in class discussions with appropriate attitudes and reverence. I believe that healthy debate and discussion is one of the best ways to learn a subject matter, talking things out and challenging different views really tests whether or not you have grasped the presented ideas. I truly value sharing knowledge with others because it helps me to grasp the ideas better. Through the process of explanation, I find myself looking at biological processes that I have accepted as fact in a completely different way, which helps me become a better teacher, researcher, and collaborator. Even during classroom discussions, when students ask me various questions about the subject matter that day, I realize any weak points there might be in my lecture and explanations. This causes me to rethink, reevaluate, and revise my teaching platforms constantly. 

I attempt to remove unnecessary pressure from the classroom by making myself and the subject matter as professionally relatable as possible. In my practice I will implement the following actions: 

1. I will make myself available through office hours and include many anonymous ways of expressing concerns and asking questions. This availability could also be through an online and anonymous voting system that I would do in preparation for and during review sessions. This system would allow students to vote on or write in subjects that they feel less sure about and would like discussed without having to voice their uncertainty to the whole class. 

2. I also feel very strongly about letting the students have partial autonomy of the things they learn. In most cases, they will take my class voluntarily hoping to receive something of value from attending and participating. For this reason, I will start every semester with a survey in which all students can request a few subject matters or relevant topics that are important to them. Then, if there are things that were not already set to be on the syllabus, I will have the class vote on their favorite of the list of topics presented and the last section of the semester will be spent discussing this subject. This allows for the students to assist me in creating the syllabus and to know that I am willing to cater this class to their interests and include them in decisions. This will keep them from feeling trapped by arbitrary guidelines at the onset of the course. 

   1. I will ensure that any "journal club classes" are as engaging as possible with the use of interactive learning. Traditional journal clubs on both the undergraduate and graduate level consist of reviewing a primary research article and going through the text line by line and figure by figure in a very methodical way. While this does have the benefit of exposing students to research articles and scientific discovery/design, this approach is very dry and daunting. In order to improve the quality of these classes, I have already begun testing a different style on many of the classes I have helped teach. This style includes a bracket "March Madness" format in which after reading through the paper separately and discussing the take homes with small groups at the beginning of class, we then discuss the figures/results/methods in a competitive way so that we are comparing and contrasting the different points of the research and potentially the entire field itself in order to learn more and discuss the positives and negatives as a group. For example, one journal club that I led was about the zebrafish genetic model. After discussing the paper in small groups and the large groups we had a bracket competition to see which model organism was the best genetic model. This allowed the class to learn about all genetic model systems in real time and debate the strengths and weaknesses of each one. I have implemented this idea in several courses and have received positive feedback from the students. 

   2. A final strength that I will bring to the classroom is the idea of interactive and experiential learning. Through teaching a biology course, I have the luxury of teaching experimental design which provides a great outlet for interesting and exciting laboratory experiments. I will try to include as many of these in my lectures as possible in order to break up the monotonous Powerpoint lecture style that plagues many college classrooms. I will also incorporate field trips to various high-power labs, both on campus and off, in addition to industrial biotechnology sites and pharmaceutical companies in order to show these students the range of possibilities in a science career, as well as the applications of the topics we are covering. I feel like this is undersold and ignored at many institutions, and I am very passionate about exposing the opportunities these students have and showing them their potential of achieving them. 

At the end of a course, I will assess whether this sense of community, respect, autonomy, and hope was instilled in my students through quantitative evaluations and final grades. However, I think the best way to know if you have truly done the teaching job you set out to do is if the students (and the teacher) come away from the course feeling inspired, confident, and curious. This is something that you can feel and observe qualitatively. This is something that makes me want to teach, the idea that I am improving myself and my pupils through the spreading of knowledge and the joy of learning. This is what makes teaching my passion. 

Teaching Experience 

My teaching experience thus far has covered a variety of depths and breadths. I have been a teaching assistant for both a graduate level and an undergraduate level course. Both of these assistantships included substantial teaching components in which I was the sole instructor of the classroom for at least four classes in both courses. I have also had experience giving guest lectures for various courses and personally mentoring both undergraduate and graduate students in the laboratory setting. 

TA-ship for a Graduate Level Course

I was a TA for the graduate course Microbial Pathogenesis for the department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at Duke University. My role in this class was to assist the different faculty lecturers in every class, answer student questions before and after each class, help with grading the three exams, and hold journal clubs for the students. I also guest lectured for this course specifically on genetic screens and using genetics to understand pathogenesis. This course consisted of 18 graduate students in their second year of the program and 2 undergraduate students in their last year of college. From this experience, I learned how to effectively cater my teaching style to different education levels. I also learned how to create an enjoyable and informative journal club session that engaged everyone in the class while simultaneously not pressuring any individual. I received great feedback from the journal club format. One student even wrote specifically about them in his/her review of the course: “Favorite things were actually Journal Club activities and interacting with TA and various PIs.” 

TA-ship for an Undergraduate Level Courses

I have also had experience as an assistant for various undergraduate classes. When I was an undergraduate at Denison University I was a TA for both the introductory biology and the ecology and evolution courses. I was mostly in charge of the laboratory set up, design, explanation, grading, and take down. These experiences were great introductions into how to effectively interact with younger students and how to field various questions from inexperienced, yet very enthusiastic budding scientists. 

I have since had a more formal teaching assistantship with undergraduates through Duke University and Dr. Beth Sullivan. I was the TA for the FOCUS Genomics and Genetics course for incoming freshmen who are especially interested in pursuing a career in STEM. I gave various lectures throughout the semester on reading scientific literature effectively, genetic model systems, epigenetics, and genetic screens. I also ran a few of the weekly “discussion dinners” where we would discuss anything from a career in STEM and life after undergrad to using genetic tools to understand pathogenesis. Shown below is a an example of one of the journal club sessions I ran for the undergraduate genetics and epigenetics class. The students are discussing the results of a primary research article in groups before presenting it to the larger group. I grew a lot as an instructor during this course. I was given a level of independence and autonomy that I had not yet received and I truly valued this experience.

Mentorship and Outreach Experience

I have also been fortunate enough to experience one-on-one mentoring from the side of the mentor through working with high school students and undergraduates who have come to our laboratory. During the summers, many high school students looking for lab experience spend time with us to learn basic techniques and to be exposed to the world of higher education and scientific discovery. I have worked closely with three high school students throughout my time at Duke. We would spend time each day planning experiments, forming hypothesis, learning basic procedures, and interpreting results. I also introduced them to scientific literature and helped them parse through the various sections of peer reviewed articles in order to appreciate the impact. I have also worked very closely with an undergraduate student over the course of her entire time at Duke University (pictured below). We have worked together on developing a story using the results from a genetic screen and identifying new functions for previously unannotated genes. We meet three times a week for approximately 10-12 hours a week throughout the year. We also read through relevant journal articles together in order to formulate new ideas on experiments and interpret our own results. I have really enjoyed working with these students in a more intimate setting and helping them develop into discerning agents of science. It was this type of mentoring that gave me the courage to pursue science and I feel it is my duty and privilege to continue this tradition and inspire other young minds in a similar way.

I also ran an outreach program for my department where we visited local elementary and high schools doing hands on demonstrations explaining microbes and DNA to future scientists. Pictured below is three young girls exploring a slide image of Aspergillus nidulans on a microscope while I explain to them the health relevance of pathogenic fungi. Many of these students had never heard of fungi causing disease and most of them had never used a microscope to look at microorganisms. 

Continuing Development 

I am constantly striving to improve my teaching abilities and expose myself to different opportunities as they arise both at Duke University and elsewhere. I have guest lectured at institutions that might have a different type of classroom environment, such as Durham Tech Community College, in order to expose myself to varied learning environments and settings. I think it is crucial to be able to adapt quickly to adversity as an instructor and exposing yourself to new places and people will only improve your flexibility. I am also currently enrolled in the Certificate in College Teaching program at Duke University where our instructors teach us how to be best prepared to enter a classroom for the first time or to adjust to a change in energy. This program also allows us to receive feedback on our teaching styles through the “Teaching Triangles” program that provides you with opportunities to have other students observe you teach a class in real time. This is so important to instructors wishing to grow and develop because it provides constructive criticism in a safe environment and might stop any bad habits before they arise. It is also really helpful to see other instructors and their teaching styles, this can provide you with different tools and techniques that you might not have thought to implement. This program and my various teaching experiences and opportunities have continually improved my teaching platform and philosophy.