Teaching
I am a teacher-scholar with a passion for education who uses research to actively engage students in the process of science and enrich lecture and laboratory content by presenting real-world examples from my own work. Through teaching in high schools, community colleges, and research universities, I have found that the most important factor in determining student success is the student’s own desire to succeed. Regardless of content difficulty, the caliber of the instructor, or institution-level learning resources, a student must be self-motivated to be successful. Engagement and ‘buy-in’ are the keys to having students make the decision to put in the required effort to do well in a course. I implement several strategies to increase student engagement and buy-in, including fostering trusting relationships between fellow students and the instructor, embracing diversity through creating an inclusive classroom, using a student-centered approach to learning, providing multiple forms of assessment, and the incorporation of technology.
I have taught six semesters of courses at American River College in Sacramento, CA, as an Adjunct Professor; served as a Teaching Assistant for graduate and undergraduate-level courses at UC Davis; and for two years, I facilitated an open inquiry-based biology curriculum for 9th and 10th grade students at Santa Rosa High School through a National Science Foundation K-12 STEM Fellowship. Most recently, I have gained international experiencing through co-teaching a graduate-level experimental design and analysis course at the University of Eastern Finland and a seminar on Ecological Interactions at the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland. In addition to these direct teaching experiences, I have sought out several opportunities to improve my teaching skills and pedagogical knowledge. I was awarded two competitive training fellowships aimed at enhancing graduate students’ understanding of student learning, assessment, curriculum design, student diversity, and inclusive teaching. As part of these fellowships, I participated in a course focused on evidence-based college teaching practices and developed and led my own workshop series on statistical analysis. I also was part of a team that designed and facilitated multiple pedagogical workshops including a Teaching Assistant Orientation, a required training for all Teaching Assistants at UC Davis. |
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