"Teaching"

"There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..."

As a prospective grad student interested in pursuing an integrated (math and biology) thesis project, I had an engineer tell me that, frankly, I didn’t have the mathematical chops to accomplish that goal. To be fair to this engineer, I hadn’t yet completed a rigorous math sequence. I didn’t let the lack of math credentials, however, deter me from pursuing my goal. My subsequent success combining math and biology in my research instilled in me the desire to ensure that future students in the biological sciences are equipped with the skills necessary to succeed. As a professor, I have two primary learning goals for my students: that they

1) acquire fluency in quantitative skills and

2) apply sound experimental design in order to answer biological questions.

By completing these learning goals, my students will be prepared to forge their own paths in Biology and have the tools necessary to do so. To be honest, this is not an easy process; there are many "wrong turns" on the way to the correct answer. As an instructor, I actually want my students to learn how to thrive with that discomfort. Students in my classes are taught how to persevere through the messiness of the process of discovery so that the concepts they learn stay with them as they advance in their careers.

Courses that I Teach:

BIO 131: Systemic Physiology

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