I am a teaching assistant in the Department of Biology at Duke University and a part-time lecturer in the Department of Biology at Rutgers University Camden. As an educator in biology, I guide students to develop critical thinking skills and facilitate student comprehension. Students experience hands-on laboratory sessions during the semester, encouraging them to take charge of their learning experiences. At the end of the semester, I find that this approach leads students to evaluate new information faster and more critically. However, this application can sometimes be frustrating and confusing for students, so I aim to ensure they experience science's excitement and its relevance to their everyday life and career choice. As a result, students undergo a curriculum that draws on diverse, real-world examples with practical applications. This model supports students by giving them a voice within the classroom through soliciting and implementing anonymous feedback to revise and improve teaching. Catering to specific students increases student enjoyment of the class but also allows for continually improving my courses for the future.

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My teaching experience comes as a teaching assistant and a part-time instructor for several undergraduate-level laboratories and lecture-based biology courses, including in-person, asynchronous, and synchronous online formats.

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As a master's student in Biology at Rutgers University, I taught laboratory sections for classes ranging from General Ecology and General Microbiology for advanced junior and senior-level Biology and Chemistry students to Microbiology and its Applications for freshman and sophomore-level Health Science and Nursing students. Although I was a Teaching Assistant for these classes, my role was the primary instructor for these students, including lecturing, grading, designing activities, facilitating labs, office hours, and preparing all media/culture stocks. After graduating, Rutgers hired me as a part-time instructor to teach and redevelop the offered microbiology laboratory and lecture classes as an online course. I redesigned Microbiology and its Applications to reflect better the New Jersey nursing licensure examination that 90% of students take to ensure the class benefits my students.

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As a Ph.D. candidate at Duke University, I have taught laboratory sections of Molecular Biology and Genetics and Evolution. Students who take these courses are usually in their first or second year and hope to pursue a medical career. Once again, my role in these courses was as the primary instructor for these students, including lecturing, grading, designing activities, facilitating labs, and holding office hours.

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These opportunities to teach at multiple levels of the college, with class sizes ranging from 6 to 30 students, have allowed me to understand better how to sustain student engagement across various levels of course complexity and organization. A complete list of courses I have taught and can teach is listed here with descriptions/syllabi.

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Within the laboratory and lecture environment, I promote engagement through hands-on activities. The structure of laboratory sessions naturally facilitates this, as the primary goal of the labs is for students to apply concepts they have learned in lectures. For example, students in General Ecology had opportunities to explore nature during field excursions to see and execute commonly used field techniques. In Microbiology and its Applications, students learn about clinical tests nurses may have to perform in a hospital. They were taught to perfect these tests and understand the meaning of the results and their applications to human health. Several exercises include think-pair-share as well as jigsaw discussions. Molecular Biology, the lab combines a traditional wet lab experience and a discussion section. Using active learning within the classroom has increased student comprehension of the material, as evidenced by student exit interviews and surveys conducted by the university or the lecturing professor at the end of each semester.

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In online courses, it can be easy for students to fall behind, feel isolated, or misunderstand assignments/my expectations. To ensure this does not happen in my classes, I actively monitor students' online activity through Canvas during the first few weeks, which is a crucial step that I take. Students who fall behind at the beginning of a course may struggle to catch up or complete the course, so it is imperative not to let this happen and provide opportunities for them to complete the missing work still. Feelings of discouragement also begin as early in the semester as the assignment requirements and due dates start to feel overwhelming and beyond the student's time available for learning. To mitigate this, I message struggling students to meet deadlines individually, as a personal and supportive email can improve engagement. Lastly, students have access to high-quality grading rubrics for course assignments that help them better understand the expectations of the course and therefore be better able to meet them. Students must reflect on the rubric requirements to determine if their work meets the rubric criteria. The reflection process can help students identify areas where they need to improve and help me understand how to support their learning and development better. In addition, this process helps students build the critical lifelong skill of self-reflection.