Teaching Portfolio

Teaching philosophy

Learning is not mere assimilation of information and concepts but requires seeing the big picture and connections between concepts. Developing mastery of a subject takes years of working with and thinking about a subject, something I have learned through my graduate training. As a teacher, my goal for my students would be to help them connect the dots between concepts learned in my classroom to those in other classes, and to their research. As a teacher, I would lead my students to see learning as one continuous fabric woven by different weavers on the same loom, switching shifts, and not as small pieces of cloth woven separately. In this context, the weavers would be the teachers, the loom would be the student and the cloth, knowledge.

My approach of teaching science is to integrate theory and laboratory sessions, as basic concepts are often reinforced when we learn by doing. We are also better at retaining, retrieving and connecting information if we learn by doing. As a more visual learner myself, I strongly believe in recent studies that show visual and auditory learning are as credible and important as the traditional textual based learning. In fact, incorporating different modes of teaching would be the most inclusive and student centric. Every individual is special, and it is still possible to attract the attention of most of a class of 60 students using such an inclusive teaching model. I also believe that teaching is a higher form of learning and hope to continue to learn how to teach better through interacting with the diversity of students in my classes.

Teaching experience and interests

Course Design

 

At University of Minnesota, I took a practical teaching class where a group of graduate students from different disciplines of sciences and engineering met to learn and perfect student-centric teaching methods such as jigsaw, inverted classrooms, visual learning etc. We were grouped based on the similarities of our major and taught other groups. Through this class, I had the opportunity to develop a model for a course and syllabus for ‘Introductory Nematology’ and educate chemists and physicists about basic nematology. This course design is availalbe in another tab on this website.

Student Tutoring

As a master’s student in India, I organized a tutoring group through the student organization. Tutors begin with teaching basics to an audience of freshmen and sophomores and move into discussing current research, serving as supplementary advanced learning opportunity. I prepared and taught microbiology and immunology for two semesters. It was an extremely rewarding experience as I gained deeper understanding of the subject while preparing for the classes.

Classroom Teaching

As a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, I taught ‘Introductory Plant Pathology (PlPa 2001)’ to a laboratory section of 16 students, evaluated their assignments and provided detailed feedback. Over two separate semesters, I also delivered interactive lectures on the nematology section for the class of over 30 undergraduates, as part of supervised teaching under Dr. Ruth Dill-Macky (2017) and Dr. Pablo Olivera (2018). I am planning to work with Dr. Dill-Macky again in Fall, helping to redesign parts of PlPa 2001. This is primarily an undergraduate level course and employs several active-learning techniques for a big group of 35 students. Student-centered, activity based, active learning is a proven effective pedagogical technique that compliments conventional teaching formats.

Mentoring experience

As a graduate student, both in India as a master’s student, as well as a PhD student in the US, I have had the opportunity to mentor and motivate undergraduates to pursue science. I support good research experience for undergraduates as it helps attract and train more scientists. During my PhD, I have trained four undergraduates for at least a semester each, in basic nematology and greenhouse experiments. I have had the special opportunity to mentor one undergraduate over three years, who is currently in graduate school for Plant Pathology.