Educator

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I bring real data into the classroom

I think that science education serves learners better when it features real data. When "science" is presented as a series of facts, concepts, and definitions, it is no different than dogma ("believe this because someone said so"). But science is not just what we know, it's also how we know it! My goal is to bring real data into the classroom to improve students’ understanding of the Nature of Science.

My approach to teaching and my teaching philosophy are informed by the calls for action in Vision and Change (2011), by my experience using the data-based Introductory textbook Integrating Concepts in Biology (Trunity), and by my personal experience in graduate school discovering the joy of hypothesis-driven research.

 

“I'm much more appreciative of how scientists approach research, and her class gave me a better feel for how to be a research scientist than when I worked in a research lab over the summer.”

— Anonymous student comment from an upper-level Signal Transduction in Cell Biology course at Earlham College, 2014

I have been teaching General Biology I & II as an Adjunct Instructor at Durham Technical Community College since 2018.

I use active learning practices extensively in my classes. In addition to teaching core concepts, I put emphasis on these socially-important issues:

  • Anyone Can Be a Scientist

    I assign weekly homework where students learn about diverse scientists. In addition to using published resources such as Scientist Spotlights, iamascientist.info, I also started an interview series on my YouTube channel to highlight scientists with unexpected stories and diverse backgrounds.

  • Human Race is a Social Construct not Based in Genetics

    When we discuss evolution, I emphasize that there is no single allele or set of alleles present in one race and not another. Human race is a social construct, yet it has real biological impacts on the health and well-being of different races. I use data-based resources from Integrating Concepts in Biology (Trunity) to explore these concepts with students.

  • Evolution & Religion Can Co-Exist

    Some students feel threatened when we discuss evolution because they think they have to give up their religious beliefs to accept evolution. Every semester, I briefly address this issue by emphasizing that religion and science take different approaches to understanding the world. I collaborated with Dr. Jamie Jensen at BYU to create a short 3-min video that addresses this.

  • Climate Change is Real

    My students interpret data about increasing CO2 levels and temperature and discuss the impacts on ecosystems and humans.

I’ve been teaching students in middle school, high school, and college since 2005.

 

My first teaching experience was in 2005 as a teacher at LearningWorks, a summer program in Minneapolis for underprivileged middle school students. That experience was like a hook in the gut: Teaching is where my heart is!

In graduate school at Duke, I participated in the Preparing Future Faculty Program and I earned a Certificate in Teaching College Biology. I taught as a TA, guest lecturer, and as a teacher for a high school Mini-Term at the NC School of Science and Math.

After earning my PhD in 2012, I spent one year teaching as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology at Earlham College in Richmond, IN. In 2017 after my postdoc, I taught as an Adjunct Instructor at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, and later as a summer teacher for high school students in the Duke Talent Identification Program (TIP) in Durham, NC. I have been teaching as an Adjunct Instructor at Durham Technical Community College in Durham, NC since 2018.