Teaching

The natural process of human learning is intuitive, which later, after instruction, becomes formal knowledge. I take advantage of this primary form of learning by demonstrating connections between the topics covered in a class and subjects with which my students are familiar, encouraging them to comprehend these concepts prior to dealing with actual definitions. I also adjust my class activities and evaluations to different learning styles. Because it is my ultimate objective that my students actually learn, I try to assess the effectiveness of my teaching through continue evaluation and reciprocal feedback, which allow me rapidly identifying major misconceptions and learning obstacles and address them promptly. I consider teaching an important aspect of my academic formation and I am committed to improve the quality of biology education of our students.

Overall, I have over 12 years of accumulated experience teaching college Biology courses for both science and non-science majors. I have also been involved in mentoring undergraduate students. During my postdoc with Dr David Houle, I had the opportunity of mentoring a number of students, from learning fly husbandry to design their independent projects, analyze their data, and write their proposals and final papers in scientific style. As an AACR Research Associate, I worked with undergraduate students in developing and presenting projects in biology education research, including the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data and the design of posters and preparation of oral presentations.