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Mentoring: I believe that mentors serve as guides on the path to professional and personal growth by providing indiviudalized advice, information, and encourgament to help their students and peers develop into successful scientistis, educators and future mentors.
Teaching: Learning is truly a life-long experience that should be enjoyable. As an educator, the most valuable things I hope to impart to students are the tools necessary for life-long exploration, questioning, and discovery of the world around them.
On the path to scientific wisdom, teachers serve as both guides and role models. Teachers are guides to the extensive background knowledge necessary for interpreting current and future research. As role models, they demonstrate the power of knowledge, patience, critical thinking, and excellence in research. It is important to convey the curiosity, excitement, and awe about the natural world that brought them to science (and microbiology). Students who are excited about the material are more interested in learning and will learn more easily. Teaching the next generation is one of the most important things a person can do. Transmission of knowledge is one of the key ways society maintains itself, solves problems, and evolves.
As a student, I have been most inspired by teachers who conveyed their enthusiasm for the subject and employed innovative teaching styles and techniques—the most memorable involved music and song. For example, a professor of mine played “The Sun Song” by They Might Be Giants to emphasize his lecture on the sun and its importance to life on Earth. I have come to realize that teaching well requires a serious commitment to continually staying abreast of current research, presenting material in interesting ways, developing motivating assignments for learning (homework, projects, etc.), soliciting student feedback, and developing suitable evaluations of students’ comprehension and abilities.
Science is about discovering principles from facts. In order to evaluate data, students require a firm base of knowledge about the subject matter. In addition to learning facts, students must learn how to think: to think critically and creatively, to ask questions, to develop hypotheses, to test hypotheses, to propose solutions, and to think beyond contemporary dogma. If students are taught to understand concepts rather than to memorize facts, students can learn to evaluate data, criticize weaknesses, recognize inaccuracies, make deductions, and hypothesize explanations. This can be a long process. I recognize that everyone learns in his own way and at his own pace. Therefore, many avenues for learning should be offered to students; including lectures, reading material, homework assignments (individual and group), discussion groups, review sessions, and one-on-one assistance. I would encourage students to help and teach each other. The best way to learn material and know if you really understand it is by explaining it to someone else. Often, understanding a student’s motivations can help determine how to present material in a way that she can appreciate. The application of knowledge to real world problem solving can provide that motivation, as I learned in my training as an engineer.
A student that completes a course in general microbiology should possess a basic understanding of what bacteria are, how they function, how they make a living, and how they affect ecosystems. I will begin with the history of life on Earth and the role of bacteria in creating and maintaining the biosphere in which we live. This requires defining what microbial life is and how it survives (growth characteristics, temperature, salinity, pressure, pH, energy sources, etc.). The tremendous diversity of microbial life cannot be understated. A basic understanding of microbial genetics, biogeochemical cycles, and microbial interactions will be expected. In addition, it is important to convey how bacteria impact our lives in terms of pathogenesis, food production, food spoilage, waste treatment, biotechnology, chemical production, and agricultural applications. Whenever possible, I will bring students to the primary literature. A course in microbial ecology will cover in detail the role of bacteria in the evolution and maintenance of the current biosphere; as well as the diversity of microorganisms, the degradative capabilities of microorganisms, microbial interactions with plants and animals, and methods available for studying microorganisms in the environment.
In my own experience, I have found teaching both challenging and rewarding. As a teaching assistant for the General Microbiology course at Cornell, I learned that an engaging lecture style can maintain the enthusiasm of the student and that visual demonstrations of concepts help convey complex ideas. For fact-filled lectures, I found it useful to distribute handouts of lecture notes. As a result, students are not overburdened with taking notes, but can actually listen and attempt to understand the concepts underlying the facts. I also learned the need for precise wording of questions because exam questions can be interpreted in many different ways. As a teaching assistant, I worked with students in small groups and learned how to promote group dynamics that were beneficial to all students involved. Having directly guided several undergraduate students at Cornell and Michigan State Universities through design, setup, execution, and analysis of laboratory research, I have observed that students with varying abilities need varying amounts of attention. Consequently, I tailor my teaching style to the individual student’s needs. Participation in an education internship developed my one-on-one teaching skills by providing direct feedback and guidance on my techniques. I realized that patience was a real asset in prompting students to answer their own questions and develop their own thoughts and ideas.
I have participated in public education and outreach opportunities for all levels—from students to teachers to journalists. Public education and outreach is vital to maintaining the scientific literacy of this country. The general public benefits greatly from understanding the technological world in which we live and realizing the impact that science (both basic and applied) has on their everyday lives. Who could have imagined the impact that Pasteur and Koch’s studies of bacteria would have on medicine, food preservation, biotechnology, and genetic research?
As part of the Expanding Your Horizons program (which strives to excite interest in math and science in young girls), I organized, developed, and taught a one-hour workshop to introduce seventh- and eighth-grade girls to microbiology. The EYH workshop was a real organizational challenge for both coordinating volunteers and squeezing lots of exciting microbiology into only one hour that resulted in a rewarding experience. I also presented my research on cold-adapted bacteria to a group of high school teachers as part of a continuing education workshop organized by the California Academy of Sciences. Recently, I participated in a workshop to educate science journalists about microbial life in extreme environments; I focused on the challenges that extreme temperatures place on life and the adaptations that bacteria have evolved to circumvent these challenges. Yellowstone National Park, with its hydrothermal systems and obvious macroscopic microbial life, was the ideal setting for this workshop. Each of these experiences stressed to me the complexity of scientific information and the necessity of tailoring scientific information into understandable doses.