Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing selected portions of my Teaching Statement here as part of a development series, as I refine my philosophies for the submission of my second-year review this fall. I welcome feedback! Feel free to comment on the post (note, all comments require my approval before appearing publicly on the site), or contact me directly if you have more substantial edits.
*Please note, these are selected portions of my Statement which have been edited to remove sensitive information. These are early drafts, and may not reflect my final version. Tenure materials that I generate are mine to share, but my department chair, committee, and union representative were consulted prior to posting these. Each tenure-granting institution is unique, and departments weigh criteria differently, thus Statements can’t really be directly compared between faculty.*
Developing curricula
The first course I proposed which was accepted by the University undergraduate curriculum committee is AVS 254, Introduction to Animal Microbiomes, which I have begun teaching annually starting fall 2020. This lecture and discussion-based course introduces students to host-associated microbiomes; the genomic collection of bacteria, archaea, fungi, protozoa, and viruses present in a host ecosystem. In each lecture, we focus on an anatomical location, theory, or a mode of microbial transfer. We discuss the host and environmental pressures which select for the resident microbial community there, and the dynamics involved in community recruitment, function, transmission, and interactions with the host. The material is primarily in animals, including mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and humans, with occasional material on insects. This course is anticipated to have broad appeal to students in the School of Food and Agriculture, as well as Microbiology and Molecular Biology. It is my hope that students are introduced to the field of host-associated microbiology through this course, and go on to participate in relevant research, during which they would generate microbial community DNA sequence datasets. Students could then take AVS 454 in the spring of their senior year to learn to analyze this data and generate a scientific manuscript. In this way, AVS 254 sets the academic track for undergraduates to follow to learn about microbiomes from theory to application. The course assignments feature a variety of written assignments, including ones to introduce them to online databases of microbial studies, to communicate science to the general public, and to synthesize information from various sources. The full syllabus and information about the class is relayed on my professional blog, https://sueishaqlab.org/teaching/avs-254-intro-to-animal-microbiomes/.
The second, which I taught as an AVS special topics course in spring 2020, and which has been approved for spring 2021 as a formal course, is AVS 454/554 DNA Sequencing Analysis Lab, with undergraduate and graduate sections, respectively. This course takes students from raw DNA sequencing data through quality assurance, data interpretation, statistical analysis, and presentation of the results as a draft scientific manuscript. Multiple drafts of the manuscript are submitted, and in addition to my reviews, students provide single-blind peer review, collectively allowing for students to refine and improve their presentation of results over time. Students are encouraged to bring their own microbial community data, or I provide unpublished data from my research collaborators, thus students have the opportunity to pursue submission of their assignment manuscripts for scientific publication along with cooperating researchers. There is a critical need in the research community for analysis of small projects like the ones used in this class; often these data are from low-priority small projects, or researchers simply do not have the time or expertise to train students in data analysis and interpretation. The special topics version had 7 students, with 2 additional students informally attending the class, and resulted in 3 scientific manuscripts submitted for review in fall 2020, all with student authors. The full syllabus and information about the class is relayed on my professional blog, https://sueishaqlab.org/teaching/avs-454-554-dna-sequencing-analysis-lab/.
Beginning in fall 2020, I began teaching AVS 401 and 402, Senior Paper in Animal Science I and II, respectively. Together, they form the Capstone Experience for AVS seniors. The scope of this class was and remains: student involvement in a research project, for which students develop a research proposal in written and oral presentation formats, and then develop a research report in written and oral presentation formats. However, I developed new lectures for the class to introduce students to the proposal writing process, and research in general, as many AVS students have focused on professional applications and not on research. These include, “What is research”, “Conducting ethical research” which also features a guest lecture from the Paula Portalain at the Office for Research Compliance, “How to read a scientific article”, “Conducting a literature review” which also features a guest lecture by Anne Marie Engelsen a Science Librarian at Fogler Library, “The proposal writing process: experimental design”, “The proposal writing process: project management.”, and “Giving a scientific presentation”. To develop their presentation skills, students first give a 3-min, non-technical “elevator speech”, then a professional presentation at the end of the semester. To develop their written skills, students write a project summary/abstract, an outline of their proposal, and two more substantial drafts of the proposal. For the outline and second draft, students will continue single-blind peer review of other proposals, to provide feedback and to improve their skills in science review and critique. The full syllabus and information about the class is relayed on my professional blog, https://sueishaqlab.org/teaching/avs-401-senior-paper-in-avs-i/.
The following sections detail how these curricula are developed and the intent behind assignments.