Teaching Philosophy and Experience

         As an educator, I specialize in teaching animal physiology and biomechanics. My own research focuses on the physics of biological movement, so my teaching connects the morphology or behavior of an organism and how they relate to physical constraints. However, I am comfortable instructing other subjects like ecology, development, evolution, behavior, physics, and fluid dynamics. As a Duke Graduate Student, I TA’ed BIOL329L: Animal Physiology three separate times. In Animal Physiology, I was responsible for organizing and running lab sections. I also TA’ed for BIOL 429S: How Organisms Move, a biomechanics seminar course where I gave lectures and helped mentor students through independent research projects. Finally, I was lucky enough to design and instruct BIOL 490S, Animal Defense: the evolution, morphology, and behavior behind biological defense mechanisms. This course was about the morphology and behavior behind antipredator defense mechanisms and how organisms use these mechanisms to elude, escape, or overcome predators. You can find a copy of my course syllabus here.

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          As part of my teaching, I hold three major goals for student learning. First, I want to ensure that students understand foundational concepts through practical hands-on research. For example, in Animal Physiology Labs, students used strain-gauges and oxygen sensors to collect biological data and then connected their data back to course concepts. Second, I want my students to think across multiple disciplines of science. For example, in How Organisms Move, we give lectures and discuss literature from physics, biology, and evolution. Finally, the most important goal I have for my students is to learn how to think critically and ask rigorous scientific questions. For example, in Animal Defense, students developed and communicated their own research questions by writing mock grant applications. Here is a copy of the grant assignment and rubric. In order to ensure my students achieve an in-depth understanding of course concepts, I apply a two-sequence teaching method. First, I use laboratory activities and active learning experiences to foster conceptual understanding. Then I use group exercises (example assignment here) and discussions as reflective activities to enhance critical engagement with these concepts. Active exercises can include the use of high-speed video cameras to visualize ultrafast movements, or stress-strain gauges to measure the force output of muscles. Group activities will involve in-class small group discussions and group data analysis of the hands-on activities using R, a statistics programming language. For example, here is an R learning exercise I developed to explore animal behavior data!

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            Accurately assessing how students achieve their learning goals is a critical part of effective education. To assess learning goals, I use a mixture of formative and summative methods. I prefer direct formative assessments that help students engage with the material. For example, I use weekly quizzes that cover course topics discussed the week before. These weekly assessments take the place of a larger midterm and function to help students continually reflect on the course material throughout the semester. We did these weekly quizzes in Animal Physiology and by the end of the semester, the quizzes were one of the students' favorite parts of the course because they felt it helped them master the material. My summative assessments will depend on the specific course learning goals. However, I like to offer an agency for students to influence their end-of-semester summative assessment. For example, at the beginning of the semester, the students and I will discuss which summative assessment (e.g., an oral presentation, a written exam, or a written report) they prefer. In my Animal Defense class, the students decided they would like to do both a written grant and an oral presentation. At the end of the semester, they appreciated the opportunity to shape their learning.

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            As an instructor, it is my duty to teach concepts to a wide diversity of learning styles and perspectives. As a young educator, I am still growing and learning. I hope to continue growing as an educator by forming an open dialogue with my students on which teaching methods are effective for them. I will hold regular office hours and use class discussions and surveys to identify which teaching methods work for various types of learners. I will also strive to promote racial diversity and inclusion in science by using the achievements of researchers and scientists of color as examples in my lectures.

            My role is to foster critical thinking skills and help students understand the scientific process. I will work hard to help my students achieve these goals through many of the methods I outlined here in this teaching statement. The students will always have a say in how the course is run and assessed. However, I will still hold my students accountable for their work and it will be their responsibility to meet the expectations that we set out as a group. These methods have worked well in my classes so far, I was awarded one of the top 5% of seminar instructors in the natural sciences for my course on Animal Defense. You can see my student evaluations here. I hope to instill in my students the qualities that will make them good scientists and good members of society.