Training, Philosophy, and Teaching Interests

Training and Experience 

When I was a university student, I quickly recognized effective communicators from those who were not—and my goal was to become a professor with excellent communication skills. To prepare for teaching at the university level, I completed teacher education training at the University of British Columbia (UBC). UBC provided a year of intensive training on lesson plans, grading, controlling audiences, and practica, which proved to be highly beneficial. I am now a certified secondary science teacher who has taught Biology to high school students for almost two years. At the University of California, Irvine, I taught several undergraduate courses (~30 students per course) as a Biology laboratory instructor. At the University of California, the University of South Carolina, and the University of Washington, I have individually taught molecular biology techniques to undergraduate and graduate students (>20), and microarray technology and bioinformatics to post-doctoral fellows (>3). Several of my students now have Ph.D. degrees in molecular biology, and former post-doctoral fellows now hold university faculty positions. At the Ph.D. level, I have taught the following courses at Alabama State University: Microbial Physiology, Biochemistry, and Applied Microbiology. In terms of teaching general microbiologists, I have organized and taught four-day-long workshops at the American Society for Microbiology General Meetings (1995 to 1998) on topics ranging from 'pathogens in drinking water' to 'the use of artificial neural networks for analyzing microbiological data.'.

Teaching Philosophy

I believe that teaching is a critical part of being a productive scientist. Specifically, teaching: (i) provides an opportunity for scientists to pass on knowledge and enthusiasm for science, (ii) forces scientists to present complex ideas in easy-to-understand ways, and in return provides much-needed feedback for writing papers and grant proposals, and (iii) helps scientists assess knowledge from the literature as well as underlying assumptions guiding research. In my opinion, the process of teaching is a reciprocal act of learning for both teacher and student. To date, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows have played a very important role in my academic development. I involve students in every aspect of my research, from testing hypotheses to polishing a manuscript for peer review. Many times, students have given me essential critical feedback that has improved my work. Clearly, in my laboratory, there is no dividing line between teaching, learning, and research.

In the classroom, I see myself as a facilitator responsible for guiding students through the curriculum via discussions, question and answer sessions, readings, and problem-solving exercises. My preferred way to teach is based on my best learning experiences as an undergraduate student in biophysics. The professors who taught this course inspired me because they made abstract concepts easy to understand and showed us the relevance of biophysics in our daily lives. How did they accomplish this? The professors wrote a paperback book containing 20 work modules. Each module contained a section on the fundamentals of a topic, a section with sample problems and answers, and a section with questions that might appear on a test. After completing a work module, a student was required to write a small test at their convenience. One of the rules for the course was that the students were required to complete a test for a particular module before the scheduled lecture presentation. A passing test score was ≥ 85%. In the event of failure, the student was given two additional chances to pass a different version of the same test. Grading for the course was based on the module test scores (50%) and a final exam (50%). This modular approach was particularly effective because it placed some of the responsibility for learning the material squarely on the student. If the student had problems with a particular module topic, they could go to a Help Center. Moreover, it was the student, not the professor, who decided if they were adequately prepared to take a test. From my observation, most students finished all the modules quickly, passing all tests on the first attempt within the first six weeks of the course. For me, the lectures turned out to be much more interesting than those of other courses because completing all the modules beforehand forced me to be in tune with the lecture content, and the professors had time to relate the module topics to real-life situations.

From this experience, I learned that the keys to success in teaching are: (i) having well-prepared documentation (work modules), (ii) having a well-thought-out curriculum and grading scheme, and (iii) providing a bridge between work modules and relevant real-life situations to stimulate critical thinking. It is my desire to create a similar learning experience for all courses I teach. Lastly, given that most students will not remember most of the information discussed in the course once it is completed, an important objective of teaching for me is to help improve scientific literacy and encourage students to think critically, like scientists.

Teaching Interests

My expertise allows me to teach: Biology, Environmental Microbiology, Microbiology, Molecular Biology, Microbial Ecology, Molecular biology, Advances in Biotechnology, Bioinformatics, Laboratory Course on Sequence Analysis of Microbial Genomes.