Opening the Door to Science
I always start my class by sharing my journey into science. I tell my students how earning my PhD felt like a group project where one partner was utterly lost, and that partner was me, just six months before. I was far from an expert. I was fumbling through complex concepts, struggling with code that never seemed to work right, and constantly rethinking my approach to data. My initial confusion wasn't a sign of my inability to conduct science; it was simply part of the process. Recognizing my early mistakes revealed just how much I had learned.
Interdisciplinary Perspective
My interdisciplinary background spans marine science, ecology, and population genetics. The classrooms I have been in are equally broad, from aquatic communities and general plant ecology to genetics and spatial reasoning. This range has given me a unique perspective on how students from diverse academic backgrounds and interests approach science from different angles. It has challenged me to adapt my teaching to fit different subjects, students, and learning environments, making me a more flexible and responsive instructor.
Embracing Challenges and Growth
Learning in STEM is about embracing challenges, growing from mistakes, and improving with each attempt. At the heart of my teaching philosophy are four core principles:
Scaffolding Complex Concepts: Guiding students as they build understanding from foundational knowledge to big-picture ideas.
Responsiveness and Student Agency: Actively listening and adapting instruction to support and empower diverse learners.
Setting Clear Expectations: Communicating goals, criteria, and processes transparently so students know what success looks like.
Making Science Personal and Inclusive: Fostering a classroom culture where students feel confident and comfortable engaging personally with challenging material.
Scaffolding Complex Concepts
Clear communication is essential for student learning, particularly in complex STEM fields like ecology and genetics. I aim to explain course material in an approachable, engaging, and accessible manner by using student-led learning, discussions, peer-to-peer learning opportunities, and adjusting my teaching strategies to meet students' needs. My experience across different courses has taught me to use a variety of analogies, visuals, and stepwise explanations to make complex ideas clear. When helping students learn about genetic drift, I'll begin by using simple circle diagrams to dive into concepts such as founder's effect, before moving into more difficult modeling. To tackle reading scientific literature, I first walk students through how to properly read graph axes and interpret figures before providing deeper context about the results. This stepwise introduction of material helps students connect new information to their existing skills and builds confidence as they master more complex ideas. Student feedback highlights the success of my approach to using small, tangible ideas to build more complicated, big-picture thinking and provides concrete examples of how this method benefits them. They note that my explanations are thorough and clarifying, and they appreciate my ability to "read the room" to provide further elaboration. This attention to student engagement and how they are understanding the material is a significant reason they can grasp challenging concepts.
Responsiveness and Student Agency
My receptiveness to student feedback and readiness to adapt the classroom structure based on their suggestions are integral to my philosophy. I encourage students to take more agency in their learning and increase engagement by regularly asking for feedback, sometimes through an open discussion during sections, or a more formal mid-quarter survey. I want to make sure students know their voices are heard. For example, when students in an intro to genetics section I was teaching shared that they struggled to apply the lecture material to the learning objectives, I shifted the section format to include more weekly practice problems and real-world examples. In general plant ecology, when students expressed confusion about a paper they were reading for their final project, I focused my office hour that week on guiding them through the paper section by section. I also allowed them to submit draft presentations for formative feedback and helped them identify key missing components before their final assignment was due. These changes, developed through ongoing dialogue with students, helped them feel more empowered in their learning and increased their agency within the classroom.
Setting Clear Expectations
To empower students' ability to complete assignments and be successful, I set clear expectations and give actionable feedback. I provide outlines of the assignment learning objectives and detailed grading rubrics for assessments. I also provide examples of assignments that meet the learning objectives and compile typical mistakes for students. This allows them to focus better on the main goals and know what success looks like. While teaching an aquatics communities section, students struggled to analyze scientific papers critically. To overcome this, I provided a guide to break down an abstract as a starting point, showing my annotated abstract, and compiled a list of questions students should focus on section by section as they read the paper. We walked through the correct answers as a class, explaining why they met the learning objectives and where each component could be found within the paper. This transparency and clarity with the assignment dramatically improved student performance, and my evaluations showed that students had a deep appreciation for the clear guidance. Throughout my courses, actionable assignment feedback has helped students identify their strengths, where to focus, and specific steps to move forward. It helps them build confidence and reminds them that I am on their team and want them to succeed.
Making Science Personal and Inclusive
I strive to make engaging with the scientific processes relevant and personal, from as small as inviting students to share pet photos as real-life examples in our discussions of Mendelian genetics, to as large as designing experiments rooted in their interests. I want students to see scientific thinking as a tool they can apply to their unique questions. I invite them to bring their diverse perspectives into our classroom conversations. Scientific exploration does not occur in a vacuum. Our experiences shape our ideas and how we process the world around us. When training the next generation of scientists, I strive to create an environment where individuals from diverse communities and with different perspectives feel welcome and valued.
My teaching philosophy is grounded in accessibility, responsiveness, setting clear expectations, and inclusion. When students can see how the knowledge they already have ties into the material, feel like they have agency in the classroom, understand how to succeed in the class, and can see where science exists in their everyday life, they feel empowered in their learning. I aim to empower every student to feel confident in their scientific knowledge and inspired to contribute meaningfully to their field of interest. I see myself as a partner in their learning journey, continuously reflecting and improving so that every student has the opportunity to succeed.