DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

 

"The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable receiving."

by Albert Einstein

 

         I believe one of the most important roles of higher education in science is to give students the intellectual stimuli and instill a life-long desire for learning. I am optimistic that all students have the inherent enthusiasm to learn more, and can attain academic achievement if the right education is provided. I take great pride when the undergraduate and graduate students who worked under my leadership achieve success and send me a letter with the words of appreciation. For these reasons, I fully understand the importance of teaching and understand that it should deserve as much preparation as my research. My main learning objective as a teacher is to explain very clearly to my students what we already know and where the limit of our knowledge lies for a given bioscience topic. Then, I present perspectives on the unanswered questions, which will motivate students to learn more. My approach to achieve this learning goal was built on five grounds: 1) reflection on impressive lectures and seminars that I have attended, 2) personal inquiry to colleagues and faculty members seeking advice on teaching; this includes Teaching Evaluation from Chair and Dean at SJU, 3) study of books and publicly available resources about student learning, 4) reflection on my mentoring experience of undergraduate and graduate students in the labs at Columbia University, and 5) feedbacks from SJU students who attended my classes.

 

         My past experiences suggest to me that I should adhere to four principles in order to achieve success in my classroom. First, convey basic knowledge and fundamental concepts in a way that is easy to understand, followed by focusing on students’ development of critical thinking, problem-solving, and creative thinking. I believe the atmosphere of active learning in the classroom is very important. For example, all handouts will be made to deliver only key concepts or keywords, which allows students to write notes on it by themselves in the classroom. Also, asking questions to the students helps a lot to avoid one-sided flow during the teaching. Second, use of multiple teaching methods such as discussion, group activity, and writings, to cover the various learning styles and different learning goals of individual students. The team project is especially valuable because it is becoming more and more important to work in collaborations with other researchers with different expertise. Third, give feedback to students as soon as possible. This is to help students self-assess how they are doing, and important for achieving higher academic performance in short time frame of a class. For example, students will take quizzes frequently in addition to mid-term and final exams, and will receive the result of the tests in the next class. Related to this, it is very important to respond to student’s email quickly. Faster response makes students believe that teachers are listening to their voice and feel more comfortable in asking questions. Fourth, prepare an objective and reliable evaluation standard and inform students of the evaluation process at the first class of the semester so that they can be prepared and ready for it as early as possible. I recognize that the outcome of a student’s learning cannot be determined by only a couple of metrics and will prepare diverse evaluation methods. I believe that my commitment to research plays a crucial role in realizing the four principles of teaching. Students will be provided with the opinions from an expert who works actively in the bioscience field, and be exposed to unsolved yet important questions, which may stimulate their intellectual curiosity and motivate them to learn more.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.