In my experience students are not comfortable with thinking critically, and synthesizing ideas and they are often afraid of formulating and verbalizing hypotheses because they fear being wrong.  Learning how to think critically about the world and communicate are important assets regardless of the student’s chosen career path.  Therefore in my courses I encourage students to question patterns and dogma, and I challenge them to think and speak critically, and help them to learn how to effectively communicate new ideas.  I also create settings where I can mentor students one on one or in small groups.  This creates an environment that allows students to ask questions and interact in dialogues that would never occur in a larger class setting. 

I challenge my students and celebrate their successes.  However, for any educational strategy to work students have to be engaged and interested in the course and materials they are being taught. I create an engaging and interactive educational environment in 3 ways.  First, I focus on helping students gain an intuition for and conceptual understanding of complex phenomenon without bogging down their intellectual creativity by overwhelming them with minutia. I believe focusing on concepts and intuitive understanding stimulates intellectual curiosity and instills confidence so that students will pursue specialized knowledge and take advanced courses on topics of interest to them.  Secondly, my courses are very adaptive and dynamic.  I frequently survey my students and monitor attitudes about the class, the work load, and the information being taught.  I also ask students for suggestions on how I might improve my presentation or help facilitate learning.  As a result my classes can be quite dynamic rotating among different educational approaches from traditional lecturing, to group discussion and debates about primary and popular scientific literature, to student-active or inquiry-based approaches.  Although, I take suggestions from students and allow them to play a role in the course development, I do not falter in my expectations. I challenge students, push them to challenge themselves, and celebrate when they do well. I believe that involving students in the educational process keeps the students engaged, keeps my presentation dynamic and creative, and helps the students take ownership of their educational trajectory.  Third, I often establish mentoring opportunities outside of class where students can ask questions and have intellectual and scientific discussions and debates in a comfortable and friendly academic environment.

I also find working with students on collaborative research projects to be challenging and fulfilling, and I incorporate undergraduates in many aspects of my research program. Over the last 3 years I have published four manuscripts (of six during this time period) with undergraduate co-authors. I have also mentored four different students through independent honors theses and each of these students graduated with highest honors.  Additionally under my tutelage, two of my undergraduate students received fellowships to conduct independent undergraduate research (a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellowship, and a University of Florida University Scholars Award).  In addition, one of my students has presented our work at an international meeting (American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists) and a second student will be presenting her project at an international meeting in January (Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology). I believe my record as a mentor is a great example of my ability to be a leader, to successfully advise students, and illustrates my commitment to training scientists and professionals.

 
Teaching Experience

 
Outreach

Another important aspect of my teaching philosophy focuses on engaging students from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds and actively involving them in science.  I believe that science as a discipline will greatly benefit from increased diversity because people from diverse backgrounds define and approach problems differently.  We must integrate ideas as well as disciplines to appropriately address scientific questions and understand the implications of our scientific inquiries.  Over the last several years, I have had several opportunities to engage students from underrepresented groups.  In fall of 2003, I worked as a NSF fellow in a GK-12 program called “science partners in inquiry based collaborative education” (SPICE).  Becoming involved in the SPICE program provided a unique opportunity for me to conduct outreach and teach middle school students the value of ecosystem health and biodiversity while instilling an appreciation of learning through inquiry based projects, but it also provided an extremely important opportunity for me to mentor students from diverse backgrounds that are typically underrepresented in science.  I received a teaching award from University of Florida's Department of Zoology for this work.

My desire to teach and mentor actually began when I was an undergraduate.  I volunteered for two years at the Virginia Living Museum in Newport News Va. where I interpreted exhibits for the public and conducted live animal programs.  Both of these activities involved teaching children and adults to value animals that they were not familiar with and even feared (e.g. sharks and snakes).  After I graduated from Old Dominion University I worked for two years at Three Lakes Nature Center in Richmond Va. where I conducted nature hikes, hands on animal programs, educational outreach, and nature programs that followed Virginia’s “standards of learning” for students from grades K-12.  After receiving my master’s degree, I co-instructed a course for the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s Monitoring and Assessment of Biodiversity Program (SI/MAB), in the summers of 2000 and 2001.  This program was designed to teach wildlife managers from diverse countries and cultures monitoring techniques to enhance their ability to manage and conserve biodiversity.  As a PhD student I was also involved in the University of Florida’s Student Scientist Training Program (SSTP) which involved mentoring two high school students (11^th and 12^th grade) who spent 35 hours a week in the lab helping me care for my experimental animals, and collect and analyze data.  I helped them use this data to write a paper and prepare a poster presentation which they presented to the SSTP committee and students.  In addition, I mentored an undergraduate student at the 89^th annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America through the Strategies for Ecology, Education, Development, and Sustainability program (SEEDS: http://www.esa.org/seeds/).  This program is designed to help students from underrepresented groups navigate through the meeting and meet scientists without becoming overwhelmed and intimidated. These non-traditional teaching positions provided me with invaluable experience in teaching about environmental health and science in interactive settings. 

As an assistant professor I will develop classes that will be engaging for all types of students regardless of whether they want to be academics, medical doctors, or are undecided. I will continue to encourage undergraduates to become involved in laboratory research, and will mentor them as they learn how to do science.  I am especially excited to mentor and train graduate students and collaborate with post doctorial research associates.  I  look forward to having a happy and productive laboratory environment where we will share ideas, work through experimental designs, analyze data sets, and critique manuscripts during our weekly lab meetings. I will also continue my outreach work and will encourage my students to be involved in educating the public about science.