Mentoring and Teaching

My philosophy is that teaching at the university level is about encouraging students to be intelligent consumers of research and source texts and inspiring them to apply research findings and lessons gleaned from their studies in their daily lives.  For students, I believe the goal of taking a course should be to know and understand material at a deeper level that includes why something might be true and how we found evidence for that.  Students should leave a course having gone beyond the ability to simply regurgitate material and should be able to engage with material using critical thinking to apply it to new situations and circumstances.

As a mentor, I strongly believe that my role is to encourage innovative thinking in my mentees and to inspire new ways of approaching problems and ideas.  Encouraging the next generation of scientific minds is one of the greatest privileges of being an educator.

 

Me with a few of my summer research mentees