I am in the back in the plaid shirt (per usual). Visitor Diego Vazquez inspects an observation hive we set up during a Night of the Open Door event at ASU in 2017.
Photo by Deanna Dent/ASU Now
Teaching Experience:
In the past have taught Human Anatomy and Physiology, General Biology, Animal Behavior, and Animal Physiology at ASU. I was a regular guest lecturer in the Animal behavior class even when I wasn't TAing for it. I employ active learning techniques in combination with the 5E method. In future courses I plan to employ a blend of different educational techniques depending upon the subject material and learning goals to give my students with diverse backgrounds multiple entry points to connect with the subject matter. I plan to include out of class reading and critical thinking assignments, formal and informal pre-and post-assessments of subject comprehension, short lectures interspersed with activity based material discussions within the classroom that facilitate peer-to-peer learning. It widely known that writing and essay assessments are often subjective an open to implicit biases that disfavor students with diverse backgrounds leading to diverse student performing worse on those assignments. In order to order to combat these unconscious biases when writing assignments are graded, I will have all writing assignments graded blind to student identity and provide clear rubrics that will be used to assess these assignments in advance to all students.
As a researcher there are innumerable informal education opportunities that arise to educate students and colleagues in the lab but also to educate the general public in the 'wild'. In the lab I regularly train and have trained undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, and research faculty at both ASU and Cornell University to do a number of laboratory techniques from statistics to animal collection in the field and everything in between. I am very generous with sharing techniques, feel free to reach out if you or your students would like to learn some of the techniques I have published on. In the 'wild', I often collect animals at parks and have curious park goers coming up and asking what I am doing and why am I walking around with butterfly nets. I always take these opportunities to share cool anecdotes about about why wasps and bees are so amazing!
As a researcher there are innumerable informal education opportunities that arise to educate students and colleagues in the lab but also to educate the general public in the 'wild'. In the lab I regularly train and have trained undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, and research faculty at both ASU and Cornell University to do a number of laboratory techniques from statistics to animal collection in the field and everything in between. I am very generous with sharing techniques, feel free to reach out if you or your students would like to learn some of the techniques I have published on. In the 'wild', I often collect animals at parks and have curious park goers coming up and asking what I am doing and why am I walking around with butterfly nets. I always take these opportunities to share cool anecdotes about about why wasps and bees are so amazing!
Public Outreach and Popular Science Writings:
I regularly participate in local insect related outreach events in addition to public school science education programs like GPSE. During my PhD I was also lucky enough to work with a talented group of people in collaboration with the ask-a-biologist website to write several articles for their website, including a large story about bees, a PLOSable article, and I contributed with the making an educational game that helps players better understand how bees communicate flower locations in the hive. I am also a regular "answerer" of all questions bee that are submitted to their website. Science outreach articles I have written and bee game links below: