My goal as an undergraduate educator is to combine my love of biology and my passion for teaching in order to educate, motivate, and inspire students to pursue biology and science while providing a solid intellectual foundation upon which students can build regardless of their future career path.

Biology is full of exciting, though often complex, concepts; my primary objective as a lecturer in university is to organize the overwhelming amount of information into digestible, understandable bits for the students and to communicate the complex biological concepts in a simple, straightforward, and interesting manner. However, biology is more than memorizing interesting facts and I strive to instill an understanding and appreciation for the simplicity and power of the scientific method that generated our current understanding of biology and that propels all modern scientific endeavour and discovery. Critical thinking and problem solving skills are therefore emphasized and developed as often as possible as they are essential tools in science and important abilities that are transferable to non-science disciplines and indeed to everyday life.

It is my goal as a biology teacher to guide and facilitate the students’ own exploration of biology. I want to help them understand that biology is more than mere facts but is rather a way of viewing the world and represents a powerful explanation for the world around us; biology as a way of knowing, to borrow a phrase from John A. Moore. In doing so, the students come to appreciate the significance of biological understanding and the relevance of biology to their own lives.

I try to share and impart some of my own excitement and enthusiasm for biology with my students. I hope to cultivate in them a sense of wonder and curiosity for biology, and science more generally, such that even after the completion of the course they will pursue their journey of biological discovery.

• Read the StFX News story about the innovative, team-taught, multi-disciplinary course about ‘Time’ that I developed and coordinated across the four universities of the Maple League. 

• Listen to this song I wrote as a review of the course when I was working as a Teaching Assistant for Histology with Dr. Sylvia Ruby at Concordia University:

Approach

As a professor, I try to make lectures interesting and engaging by combining traditional didactic learning with a variety of other methods and technologies. In all my courses I establish a well-defined structure in the form of well-organized lectures and online learning platform (e.g. Moodle). I make sure clear expectations are explicitly stated by providing topic summaries, marking rubrics, and sample exams. I use personal response devices (‘clickers’), incorporate original songs on topics from the course, have students participate in class demonstrations (e.g. passing ‘electrons’ (tennis balls) around to illustrate key points of cell respiration), and employ an incentivizing system of bonus points.

I endeavour to continually develop my pedagogical methods and to learn new skills and techniques by observing other educators, discussing teaching with colleagues, and attending teaching workshops and conferences whenever possible. I incorporate current, innovative, and evidence-based methods and approaches that I learn into my teaching. I have recently been working on integrating more inquiry-based learning techniques, like Q-Focus, into some of my classes. 

Below are some projects submitted by students in my Intro Cell Biology course at StFX University:

• Watch this video one group prepared about the light reactions of photosynthesis: