Education and Outreach

 
 

Enter my world of teaching, follow me to find about the classes I am teaching or the one I taught as well as resources for students in those classes and syllabus examples.


This will lead you to one of the aspects of science that I cherish: how to give back to the community that supports our research. You will learn about the event I created (BioBonanza) and about the different outreach activities I engage in.

 

A little bit of background

When I arrived in Kentucky, from France, I did not realized that I will have to teach for my Ph.D. (I have a Teaching Assistantship). I knew little about the american education system, indeed, I thought only undergraduate and master students were paying tuition. With retrospective, I am glad I had to teach to pay my tuition (I couldn't have handled the amount of debt overwise). More importantly, my experience as a TA made me realize how much I love teaching and transmitting knowledge!

Teaching comes naturally to me, not that I consider myself a good teacher (everyone is learning along the way), but I can say that I enjoy teaching and the time I spend in preparation to teach. Of course, you will find lots of students that could tell you all the things that I was and am doing wrong. I'd like to think you might find some that would tell you the opposite too! You will also find a majority that have nothing to say about me, neither good nor bad, it seems as they went through classes unchanged by their experience. This exact fact is what drives me to become a better teacher. I thrive to reach each student, be it via my own way of teaching or via the material. All in all, I refuse to say that it's the student fault if she/he wasn't engaged with the class. I don't want to say it's the teacher's fault alone either, I just don't see blaming the students as a productive attitude coming from teachers. I can't control the student attitude if they are blaming the teachers but I can only control what I do, how I teach, and the material that I teach; that is why I strive for excelling at those things and less at uncontrollable things such as how much the students like me. If I do a good job, that should come with the package, at some point. (I’ve got a great blog article about this philosophy).

In my opinion, the collective responsibility of teachers falls onto two main axes: on one hand, teaching appropriately when students reach out to teacher; on the other hand, bringing or providing the teaching experience to people in general. The former axis is well-known and rely on in-class or online teaching; whereas, the latter axis asks teachers to enter the realm of educational outreach!