I have been teaching human physiology, health and medicine related topics for more than a dozen years. I was previously teaching at Fordham University and just this January moved to Drexel University. At Drexel I teach Introductory Biology courses in addition to scientific process, and human physiology courses.  

In 2020, I was selected to be a part of the Fordham University “Reimagine Higher Education incubator” where we discussed the big problems in higher education and worked in small groups to propose solutions to the big problems. One of the biggest problems my group identified was climate change and we all felt that climate change will influence every aspect of our lives including higher education. The issue with climate change is that while majority of people agree that it is man made and that it is worsening, it either doesn’t seem urgent enough or seems too difficult or too expensive to undertake. We, as educators, want young people to be educated about climate change and its impact on every aspect of life.  

Our proposal involved creating a course on the impact of air pollution in the Bronx and New York City area on asthma incidence. Fordham faculty and students would develop a course for middle and high school students on air pollution, causes of air pollution, impact of climate change on air pollution, and the correlation between air pollution and asthma and other health outcomes in the Bronx and NYC. We supplemented the background and science of air pollution with hands-on research on measuring air pollution, analyzing air pollution data, and assembling their own air pollution monitoring devices.  

At Drexel, I taught BIO 114 Climate Change and Human Health in spring 2024 and am teaching it again in fall 2024.  This course is for non-Bio majors and provides a framework for understanding climate change topics and its impacts on human health. I was teaching this course while I was participating in the climate pedagogy incubator. It was great for me to be able to discuss various aspects of teaching climate change and implement them in my class immediately.  

I used several topics that we discussed in the climate pedagogy incubator in BIO 114. One of them was about writing down a reason for climate hope. A lot of times, especially to young people, climate change seems overwhelming and can lead to climate change related anxiety. So, being able to articulate a reason to hope about climate change can be helpful and spur collaborative action on to mitigate climate change.  

One of the most important outcomes for me for BIO 114 was creating a term project for my students that involved writing a climate change story for elementary school age children. The students were asked to incorporate climate change topics in their story, explain the impacts of climate change, and also provide a workable solution all at an elementary school reading level. This project was embraced by most students, and I got great feedback from students on how much they enjoyed this project.  Several of my students thanked me for offering them a creative project, which is apparently quite rare in a science course.