Today is the fifth and final day of the July 2022 MSE virtual symposium, which is focused on “MSE Education Practices and Curriculum Design”. Don’t worry, you still have time to register!
This session will feature three talks featuring educators who have brought sociology into their microbiome courses, and vice versa, and who have experience creating out-of-the-box curricula to engage students in learning while helping them to see themselves as scientists. Our hope is that attendees for this session learn from different perspectives how to creatively present microbiology courses which situate learning about the microbiome with learning about social and environmental systems.
Session 5: “MSE Education Practices and Curriculum Design”
Erin Eggleston, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biology, Middlebury College
Monica Trujillo, Ph.D., Associate Professor, of Biology Queensborough Community College, The City University of New York
Carla Bonilla, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of San Diego
Scope: Curriculum which blends disciplines is highly engaging, and can be used to teach complex concepts, and can help students combine their existing cultural and social identities with their growing researcher identity. However, creating an interdisciplinary curriculum can be challenging. This session frames educational conversations in MSE, and gives perspectives on creating courses that blend microbiome and social sciences for different levels of education.
Learning Objectives of Session: Attendees will 1) identify successes and barriers to entry for MSE curriculum at different education levels (K-12, UG, grad, general public), 2) Share ways in which we incorporate MSE in our curricula (i.e. assignments, class period, multi-day module, full course, etc.); 3) develop ideas for further curriculum design for their own courses.
Format of talks: Three 30-min lecture-style talks from education practitioners who have successfully built courses around MSE topics, including an outline of learning goals, approach to course, lessons learned/challenges, and more.
Format of breakout rooms: Each room creates a lesson plan outline, and each room has a designated topic area (e.g. human microbiome equity) to help audience members group by teaching discipline.
“Tiny Earth: Leveraging an instructor community to create antiracist curriculum in a research course”
Dr. Ally Hunter, PhD., Lecturer, iCONS Program & Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Youth Engagement, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Part of NSF Project RAISE (Reclaiming Access to Inquiry Science Education for Incarcerated Learners), and NSF Project INSITE (INtegrating STEM Into Transition Education for Incarcerated Youth).
Dr. Melissa Zwick, PhD., Associate Professor of Biology, Stockton University
“Science through storytelling: Using case study pedagogy as inclusive practice in undergraduate microbiology.”
Dr. Davida Smyth, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Molecular Microbiology at Texas A&M University in San Antonio
“Using wicked problems to CURE your teaching”
12:30 – 14:15 Introduction and Speakers
14:15 – 14:30 Break
14:30 – 16:00 Breakout room discussions based on skills development, in smaller groups
We are a week away from the fifth and final day of the July 2022 MSE virtual symposium, which is focused on “MSE Education Practices and Curriculum Design”. This session will feature three talks featuring educators who have brought sociology into their microbiome courses, and vice versa, and who have experience creating out-of-the-box curricula to engage students in learning while helping them to see themselves as scientists. Our hope is that attendees for this session learn from different perspectives how to creatively present microbiology courses which situate learning about the microbiome with learning about social and environmental systems.
Session 5: “MSE Education Practices and Curriculum Design”
Friday, July 22nd, 12:30 ~ 16:00 EST. Register for this session, which is free and will be held over Zoom.
Session leaders:
Erin Eggleston, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biology, Middlebury College
Monica Trujillo, Ph.D., Associate Professor, of Biology Queensborough Community College, The City University of New York
Carla Bonilla, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of San Diego
Scope: Curriculum which blends disciplines is highly engaging, and can be used to teach complex concepts, and can help students combine their existing cultural and social identities with their growing researcher identity. However, creating an interdisciplinary curriculum can be challenging. This session frames educational conversations in MSE, and gives perspectives on creating courses that blend microbiome and social sciences for different levels of education.
Learning Objectives of Session: Attendees will 1) identify successes and barriers to entry for MSE curriculum at different education levels (K-12, UG, grad, general public), 2) Share ways in which we incorporate MSE in our curricula (i.e. assignments, class period, multi-day module, full course, etc.); 3) develop ideas for further curriculum design for their own courses.
Format of talks: Three 30-min lecture-style talks from education practitioners who have successfully built courses around MSE topics, including an outline of learning goals, approach to course, lessons learned/challenges, and more.
Format of breakout rooms: Each room creates a lesson plan outline, and each room has a designated topic area (e.g. human microbiome equity) to help audience members group by teaching discipline.
“Tiny Earth: Leveraging an instructor community to create antiracist curriculum in a research course”
Dr. Ally Hunter, PhD., Lecturer, iCONS Program & Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Youth Engagement, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Part of NSF Project RAISE (Reclaiming Access to Inquiry Science Education for Incarcerated Learners), and NSF Project INSITE (INtegrating STEM Into Transition Education for Incarcerated Youth).
Dr. Melissa Zwick, PhD., Associate Professor of Biology, Stockton University
“Science through storytelling: Using case study pedagogy as inclusive practice in undergraduate microbiology.”
Dr. Davida Smyth, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Molecular Microbiology at Texas A&M University in San Antonio
“Using wicked problems to CURE your teaching”
12:30 – 14:15 Introduction and Speakers
14:15 – 14:30 Break
14:30 – 16:00 Breakout room discussions based on skills development, in smaller groups
The speaker lineup is set for the fifth (and final) day of the July 2022 MSE virtual symposium, which is focused on “MSE Education Practices and Curriculum Design”. This session will feature three talks featuring educators who have brought sociology into their microbiome courses, and vice versa, and who have experience creating out-of-the-box curricula to engage students in learning while helping them to see themselves as scientists. Our hope is that attendees for this session learn from different perspectives how to creatively present microbiology courses which situate learning about the microbiome with learning about social and environmental systems.
Erin Eggleston, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biology, Middlebury College
Monica Trujillo, Ph.D., Associate Professor, of Biology Queensborough Community College, The City University of New York
Carla Bonilla, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of San Diego
Scope: Curriculum which blends disciplines is highly engaging, and can be used to teach complex concepts, and can help students combine their existing cultural and social identities with their growing researcher identity. However, creating an interdisciplinary curriculum can be challenging. This session frames educational conversations in MSE, and gives perspectives on creating courses that blend microbiome and social sciences for different levels of education.
Learning Objectives of Session: Attendees will 1) identify successes and barriers to entry for MSE curriculum at different education levels (K-12, UG, grad, general public), 2) Share ways in which we incorporate MSE in our curricula (i.e. assignments, class period, multi-day module, full course, etc.); 3) develop ideas for further curriculum design for their own courses.
Format of talks: Three 30-min lecture-style talks from education practitioners who have successfully built courses around MSE topics, including an outline of learning goals, approach to course, lessons learned/challenges, and more.
Format of breakout rooms: Each room creates a lesson plan outline, and each room has a designated topic area (e.g. human microbiome equity) to help audience members group by teaching discipline.
“Tiny Earth, A Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE)”
Dr. Ally Hunter, PhD., Lecturer, iCONS Program & Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Youth Engagement, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Part of NSF Project RAISE (Reclaiming Access to Inquiry Science Education for Incarcerated Learners), and NSF Project INSITE (INtegrating STEM Into Transition Education for Incarcerated Youth).
Dr. Melissa Zwick, PhD., Associate Professor of Biology, Stockton University
“Science through storytelling: Using case study pedagogy as inclusive practice in undergraduate microbiology.”
Dr. Davida Smyth, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Molecular Microbiology at Texas A&M University in San Antonio
“Using wicked problems to CURE your teaching”
12:30 – 14:15 Introduction and Speakers
14:15 – 14:30 Break
14:30 – 16:00 Breakout room discussions based on skills development, in smaller groups
This is the final installment of the selected portions of my Teaching Statement as part of a development series, drafted 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.*
Evaluating my approach to teaching (modified to remove sensitive information)
I regularly solicit student feedback in my courses, either in class, or via anonymous surveys using online teaching platforms (Brightspace), to improve the quality and content of my teaching materials. For example, a voluntary, anonymous survey of AVS 401 Senior Paper in Animal Science I students in fall 2020 on lecture content and order revealed that the material presented (see Developing curricula) was all or partly new to them, that they would have preferred to learn about Project Management and Experimental Design earlier in the lecture series, and that they found all lectures to contain useful information. Survey report available upon request. Student comments included
[ Student comments redacted for the blog post]
Similarly, I solicit feedback from my peers, including an ad hoc Pedagogy in STEMM working group on campus. The working group meets semi-weekly to discuss curriculum development, and in particular, including social issues into science courses. I led a one-hour meeting on re-thinking tense classroom conversations, as well as making student contribution equitable and productive. My re-devised strategy, a result of that working-group meeting, for discussion topics which do not elicit student engagement is to ignore the topic discussion and jump to resolution planning in the short and long-term using starting scenarios which include cost/benefit analyses, if applicable.
Finally, the use of online teaching software (Brightspace) allows me to evaluate student engagement in real-time, from tracking assignment submission times, to identifying patterns in grading that point to poorly-worded or confusing assignments, to participation in online discussion forums by topic. The software facilitates tracking progress by individual students or the class over time, allowing me to parse when I need to reach out to offer additional help, or when I need to change an assignment deadline because it conflicts with large assignments (such as mid-term exams) from other courses which divert student attention.
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.*
Tying science course content to other aspects of society
I have two goals in my attempt to connect my science curricula to other aspects of society: to provide a broader educational perspective on science, and to stimulate imagination regarding the application of scientific knowledge to community building and civic engagement. Students need to understand that science is ongoing, and that there are yet many questions in the field for them to answer.
One technique to connect science and society in my coursework is to encourage students to self-identify as scientists, and to understand that they are able to participate in it. For example, on the first day of AVS 401 (Capstone), the students made a word-cloud of adjectives to describe their idea of a scientist, shown below. At the end of the academic year, after participating in research and learning about the process, students will make another collaborative world-cloud. As a class, students will reflect on whether their understanding of science and scientists has changed, and whether they are more (or less) likely to perceive science as a field that they are able to engage with. Hopefully, this participation in research and reflective exercise will accentuate their use of effort-based descriptors, such as “patient” or “methodical”, rather than ability-based descriptors, such as “gifted”, when thinking about scientists, and thereby when thinking about themselves. It is important for students to learn that science is a process to participate in, not a gift that you are born with. In fact, a large-scale research study found that student achievement gaps were more dramatically narrowed when the instructor held the personal view that ability could be taught, rather than ability was fixed, i.e. you are born with it (Canning et al. 2019, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aau4734).
Word-cloud of adjectives to describe a scientist, AVS 401, Sept 1, 2020.
Another technique is to highlight the importance of the principles of research (i.e. finding and testing information for accuracy) and how those principles can be integrated into daily life or future careers, regardless of what those are. This includes teaching the AVS 401 students about why we need research, for example, in order to be more objective and remove our personal biases. I explain how search engines work, and how the design of algorithms can contribute to the popularity of search results outweighing the quality and correctness of the information. I talk about the importance of unbiased data in training sets, highlighting examples of artificial intelligence programs which were trained on social media interactions espousing violent rhetoric because human users thought it was fun to tell the AI that all humans held such views.
In addition to providing information about the process of research and how to design an experiment, I give AVS 401 students information on the administrative aspects of research, including personnel and project management. For example, I teach students about how researchers find funding and the goals of writing research proposals, and highlight the importance of including descriptions of project management in research proposals to prove you have the capacity to perform the experiment I also give examples of demonstrated implicit bias in proposal reviewing that creates inequality in funding availability to different demographics of scientists, and how this artificially makes them look less competent when it comes time for internal review. While this may seem immaterial to the class, reminding students that science cannot be divorced from the views of society, and that in order to overcome our bias as scientists we need to overcome our bias as people, too.
Thus, I provide background information of science and society to my classes, where pertinent. For AVS 254, Introduction to Animal Microbiomes, the first section of the course (8 lectures) are devoted to the development of microbial ecology theory and technology over time, from the discovery of “wee animalcules” to the use of metagenomics. During these lectures, I provide annotations on historic scientists who have been lauded for their work, but who used that science for discrimination. For example, James Watson, one of the researchers credited with determining the structure of DNA and the process of replication, was famously racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic, to the point where some of his awards were later revoked by institutions. In one of his biographies, he devoted an entire paragraph to denigrating the appearance of Rosalind Franklin, whose originally-uncredited work was integral to Watson’s own success (https://www.vox.com/2019/1/15/18182530/james-watson-racist). By telling this story in lecture, and following up with a discussion on “Elitism and Credit for Intellectual Contribution”, I place what is clearly a monumental scientific discovery in the context of society and human interactions. It is critically important for students to understand that the journal articles they read about animal microbes in the rest of the class is the result of hundreds of years of effort and thousands of contributors, because it starts a discussion about power dynamics in science and in workplaces, in general. It is important for them to understand how implicit bias, stereotypes, elitism, or even poor interpersonal relationships can affect science, as well as for them to learn that they have rights to their intellectual property and that they can actively make their future workplaces more equitable such that we do not continue to make the mistakes of the past.
Another technique is getting students to appreciate the hundreds of years-and-counting worth of history which led us to our current understanding of the microbes that interact with us. Without that history, and a discussion of how that technological journey shaped our current scientific understanding, I cannot do justice to the majority of the coursework. By and large, DNA sequencing is the technology behind much of the subject material in my AVS 254, Intro to Animal Microbiomes class. Sequencing is often portrayed as a panacea for all scientific questions, yet I teach students that as this technology improved we realized our experimental procedures were biased. Being able to see this change over time requires perspective and time spent in a field, something that most undergraduates do not yet possess for microbial ecology. And without the historical perspective, how can we understand that the most prevalent DNA sequencing technology today owes its success, in partm to the acquisition of a patent the company bought in a ‘fire sale’ because no one wanted to buy the patent outright from an African American with no higher education degree. In science courses, we only have so much time to disseminate information, and for that reason we often skip to the results, the end point, the cutting edge. Yet in telling only one story, or only the ending of the story, we rob students of the opportunity to see that science is a living process over time. To see that scientists may be fallible, or that technology has both limited and informed our understanding of the natural world, or to understand why “some scientists” may disagree about the effects or scope of climate change. Students need to understand that science is ongoing, and that just because knowledge is not fixed does not mean that is unreliable.
Towards the second goal, I use assignments and in-class discussions to stimulate imagination towards applying scientific knowledge to life outside of the classroom for the purpose of community building and active citizenship. In fact, the AVS 254 discussion on “Elitism and Credit for Intellectual Contribution” is a great example. Students engage with this topic because it is a situation that they can identify with. An in-class discussion on “Are your microbes really yours?” similarly stimulates student engagement. I think this topic succeeds because it is anovel concept and it sparks curiosity, and because it is a neutral topic in that there is no wrong stance, and asking questions about the topic is not associated with a moral judgement.
However, not all topic discussions are successful with all student groups. For example, “Do we have a right to tell people how to conduct agricultural practices?”, after a lecture about agricultural practices which affect gut microbes and may trigger disease in livestock This topic is one that I had devised at the University of Oregon for non-science-majors, who were interested in human connection to animal-microbe interactions. Asking them questions which deliberately set up a pro/con side appealed to them because they were used to being asked to debate stances they did not espouse and they found it an interesting thought experiment. However, at UMaine, teaching to animal- and life science students, the same question failed to engage them because the topics were not hypothetical as they had direct experience in it and they had already formed conclusions about the topic. UMaine students also felt that the phrasing of this question was insensitive, which had been my point – I wanted them to practice arguing a stance for agricultural sustainability in the face of opposition. Because UMaine students had already come to the same conclusion about this topic – that agricultural sustainability was important and could be used to improve economic security of food systems, they felt there was no question for them to answer.
As my first semester teaching AVS 254 has been fall 2020, in a remote format during a pandemic, the conversational interaction that I typically have with my students is lacking, which is usually the basis for how I develop the topic and phrasing of discussions. Instead, to improve my curricula and my strategy for using discussions to improve student critical thinking skills over the course of the semester, I workshopped my approach to discussions in an ad hoc Pedagogy in STEM working group on campus. The working group meets semi-weekly to discuss curriculum development, and in particular, weaving social issues into science courses. I led a one-hour meeting on re-thinking tense classroom conversations, as well as making student contributions equitable and productive during discussions. My re-devised strategy (a direct result of that working-group meeting) for discussion topics which do not elicit student engagement is to ignore the topic discussion and jump to resolution planning in the short and long-term using starting scenarios which include cost/benefit analyses, if applicable. Instead of “Do we have a right to tell people how to conduct agricultural practices?”, the set-up will be “How do we plan for more sustainable ruminant agriculture?” Students will be given a scenario of a farmer in Florida that wants to switch their cattle herd to a heat tolerate breed. A brief economic analysis will be provided, such as cost to buy new cattle, as well as management concerns such as availability of markets to sell off current stock or sourcing new animals from less-common breeds. Students will then have to decide how they will “get there from here”: what will they do today? Tomorrow? In one year? In ten years? Changing industries and human societies is a slow path, and many people get discouraged by their lack of progress and move away from active citizenship. Having students plan out short and long-term goals for change will ideally help them to learn to apply knowledge to planning actions today, and in the future.
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.*
Research mentorship (modified to remove sensitive information)
For students in my lab, who are listed in the Student Research Mentoring section, I approach mentorship the same way I do my in-class pedagogy, which is to say that I stress the importance of both technical skills and communication skills. A large portion of their time is spent developing laboratory skills, many of which are translatable to other fields and types of research. These skills include sample collection, DNA extraction, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), qualitative PCR (qPCR), DNA purification and quantification, gel electrophoresis, DNA sequencing library preparation, DNA sequence data analysis, microbial isolation from mixed communities, microbial culture under aerobic and anaerobic conditions, microbial biochemical testing and microbiology, microscopy, as well as some mammalian cell culture. In addition to learning these skills, students are responsible for performing related data analysis, developing or refining protocols, and learning to care for the equipment they are using. As for communication skills, students must read and translate information found in scientific articles, perform literature reviews, present their updates or results in lab meetings, write scientific protocols, generate and give scientific presentations, and write scientific manuscripts or other documents for dissemination.
However, I feel that learning to manage scientific research is also a critical skill for students, and all participate to some degree, including my undergraduate students. Students are asked to take the lead on contacting other faculty with questions, calling manufacturers for information on supplies and reagents, generating shopping lists for materials and comparing products, updating inventory, and sharing and curating information or data. Once students feel proficient in a particular skill, they are encouraged to teach it to another student. Likewise, multiple students are grouped together on projects, giving them a cohort of peers to trouble-shoot and discuss their research with. For projects involving culturing work, this also requires them to learn division of labor, time management, and coordination of research efforts in order to maintain the experiment and share equipment. For graduate students, these project management skills also include a small amount of personnel management, as they are designated as project team leaders and participate in coordinating undergraduate students in the lab.
I have been mentoring student researchers at the University of Maine since January 2020, beginning with undergraduates and a non-thesis graduate student, and adding two thesis-based graduate advisees as of fall 2020. I am currently a documented committee member for three graduate students, including two in the School of Food and Agriculture, and one at Montana State University in Land Resources and Environmental Sciences. For each of these students, I provide mentoring, training, and high-level perspective on microbiology lab work, including DNA extraction, PCR, qPCR, and sequencing library preparation, as well as DNA sequence data analysis. All three projects relate to my work on microbial communities in agriculture, or which would impact the gut. Several of these students are working on collaborative projects between myself and other researchers, including those on and off campus. In particular, students from other majors and departments bring their scientific skills to my microbiology and microbial genetics work, and increase the overall competency and skill set of my lab. These students support interdisciplinary work, and have contributed or will contribute to scientific publications and presentations as authors.
I strongly believe that students who contribute to research should have the option to contribute at an author level, if they choose, but many are unaware of their intellectual property and publication rights that the University supports. In my varied experiences in academia, I have been witness to research disputes on authorship which inevitably ended in the student researcher being negatively affected by the resolution of the dispute. In nearly all of these cases, guidelines on publication rights and expectations in the lab were not clearly outlined between the student and the advisor. Nor were there guidelines in place for resolving disputes via mediation from a true third party. In one of the labs I trained in, a Memorandum of Understanding was developed by the researcher to outline rights and responsibilities for new lab members, and over the years I adopted this document to be pertinent for my research situations. At the University of Maine, I heard a similar need for this type of document from students, and have been working with students, faculty, and administrative staff to revise an MOU for use on campus. At present, we are in the process of finalizing a clear first draft, after which we will invite campus members, such as those in the Graduate College, unions, tech-transfer office, and Student Life, to a focus group to discuss the document. It is my goal to have the Graduate College adopt a modifiable version of the MOU and encourage faculty to discuss it with new lab members.
[The rest has been removed for this post as it contains student information.]
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.*
Integrating research and teaching
AVS 454/554 DNA Sequencing Analysis Lab encourages students to bring their own microbial community data, or allows them to work on unpublished data donated by my research collaborators. By working with unpublished data, and connecting to active research projects, students have the opportunity to develop real-world skills in a lifelike research context. While I teach them how to perform statistics or create figures, as well as when they are contextually appropriate, the development of their research narrative and results presentation is somewhat-student led. They learn to explain their data, not only to me or to other students during peer-review, but to researchers who typically have expertise in fields other than microbial ecology. And, the use of unpublished data creates the possibility to pursue submission of their manuscripts, generated for class assignments, for scientific publication along with cooperating researchers, which engages students in research beyond the scope of the class.
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 (AVS 590) in spring 2020 was composed of 7 students, with 2 additional graduate students informally attending the class as they were graduating that semester. The work in class resulted in 3 scientific manuscripts submitted for review in fall 2020, all with student authors and some with student first-authors. In particular, the extended interactions of students through internal and external review offers them an opportunity for guidance through what can be a challenging process for new researchers. For the spring 2020 class, I was presented with two unpublished datasets from collaborators at UMaine and across the US, and I view this class as an opportunity to assist UMaine students in networking to improve their career trajectory. I anticipate more enrolled students, and more collaborative projects, in future offerings of this course.
Beginning in the 2020/2021 academic year, I began teaching AVS 401 (fall) and 402 ( spring), 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. Animal and Veterinary Science is heavily focused on professional development for animal science, production, and veterinary careers, which most accurately serves the interest of the majority of our students. The final component of their education with us is to learn to apply that knowledge in an informational-seeking capacity, i.e. research. Most students in the department and on campus, in general, have no prior experience participating in research. Or, their participation extends to sample collection and processing, and data analysis. It is difficult to incorporate the aspects of experimental design conceptualization and project management, despite being critical aspects of scientific research and development. Thus, in fall 2020 I began with an academic approach to applying these aspects of research in education, through the use of lectures. Feedback from students early on in the fall semester indicated that many of the concepts I included in my lectures (see Developing curricula section) were almost or completely new to them.
To provide a more comprehensive experience in conceptualizing research questions and developing plans to test them, I required students to include other components in their research proposals in addition to the background information, hypothesis, objectives/aims, and experimental design or project description. These additional components include a project timeline, a list of project personnel and their responsibilities or contributions, a statement on data management and sharing, and a statement on information dissemination and sharing, with specific outcomes or outputs listed (if applicable). The infection-preventative measures enacted to contain the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has shifted the amount and type of research on campus, and the way that students are able to engage in active research. Thus, for fall 2020 I did not require students to consider some aspects while writing their research proposal in the fall for AVS 401, such as budgets and justification, whether they had available equipment, and a description of their available facilities, but these will likely become small written components in future years. For the research proposal, I do not consider any of the materials that students generate to be binding, as projects evolve during their course and many student projects are redirected by advisors, and I clarified this point to students. As long as a research proposal was well-thought out, it could be materially different from the research report they generate by the end of the spring semester.
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.*
Improving scientific literacy and communication skills
In all of my curricula development, I put particular emphasis on designing assignments which build technical and communication skills. The technical skills are developed through walkthroughs for learning to use online databases such as NCBI’s Nucleotide (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nucleotide/) and MG-RAST (https://www.mg-rast.org/), learning to read scientific articles, and learning to analyze data as needed. AVS 454/554 is primarily skills-based, and specific skills are listed in the Developing curricula section.
The communication skills are primarily practiced through written assignments. Scientific writing is particularly important in microbial ecology and host-microbe interactions, fields in which strict memorization might not prove useful, as the body of knowledge changes rapidly. Rather, the material lends itself to critical thinking and debating theory, to presenting a scientific argument, to problem solving, or to composing technical/scientific writing, which is different than much of the written assignments students have accomplished in other coursework. In allowing students the word count to work through their thoughts, instead of providing short answers, they are able to find the words to express their opinion on, for example, the Hygiene Hypothesis when only weeks before they didn’t know that some microbes can turn the immune system on or off.
Written assignments allow me to provide students with more substantial feedback, including suggestions on grammatical corrections, sentence structure or placement, or leaps-of-logic where they left readers behind, and of course, on the strength of the scientific argument. This is particularly helpful when learning to write technical science. These written assignments are narrowed to a specific topic but are otherwise open-scope, and while I provide a recommended reading list, multiple options are available for most of the lectures, which allows students to select the journal articles and scientific information used as the reference material for their assignments. In giving students the agency to choose a topic to write about from the curricula tasting menu I’ve provided in my lectures, I receive back more diverse topics than just what I provided, which keeps things interesting for me. Students are more engaged when they can connect to material of their own choosing and select something relevant to their life. And, in giving them assignments which practice their writing voice, I witness their progression towards mature scientific writing.
For most of the students I have taught, my class is their first formal introduction to the subject, whether it be research, host-microbe interactions, or DNA data analysis. To give students more time to practice the material, and to improve retention, I give topic-related readings, have a guided discussion at the end of lectures, and ‘stack’ assignments. For example, in AVS 254, Introduction to Animal Microbiomes, students write a non-technical summary of a scientific article: 1-2 paragraph summary in which they have to introduce the paper and its purpose, the methods used, and a major result or two. Trying to explain a complex experiment in simple terms is more challenging than it seems, because students need to understand the material in order to recreate it into their own words. By restricting the length in these assignments, it forces students to be more direct in their explanation. When it comes time to write an essay for a take-home exam, I allow the students to build off those summaries, if they choose, having received my feedback.
I also promote more creative information presentation in assignments, including “concept maps”. The assignment is to create a visual outline (diagram) around the specified topic. Starting with a main idea or topic in the center, branches are created out to secondary ideas, and so on, like a spider web, to create a concept map/diagram of important related topics and information. The goal of this is to create a study guide based on what students felt are the important concepts, centered around the material we have covered in that section of the course material. Creating a visual map in this way helps students create order out of the information, by setting up a hierarchy of importance to better understand the relationships between ideas. An example is provided below, with permission from the student.
Concept Map on ‘Microbes and Technology’, by Kiera O., student in AVS254 Fall 2020. Used with permission.
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.
One aspect of my journey in academia that I did not receive any formal training in (few do but that’s beginning to change), was the development of a Teaching Statement. Which is to say, how to develop my personal philosophy on how I approach university-level education, how I decide which facets of information or skills to include and foster in students, and how to assess whether my teaching style and content are effective.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing selected portions of my Teaching Statement here, 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.
The Teaching Statement is a component for most academic positions which include a lecture or teaching component as a primary effort of the job. I had to write one for my assistant professor applications, but not for any of my post-doctoral or graduate positions even though those included some teaching. For my job applications, my Teaching Statements reflected my previous experiences, explained the courses I wanted to develop, and gave a brief introduction to how I approach teaching.
As a tenure-track assistant professor, I will spend the first 5-ish years of my position creating a tenure packet – a massive document that amalgamates all my accomplishments, failures, and explanations of my actions. Since 50% of my appointment is teaching, my packet will include student evaluations of my courses, a list and description of the courses I developed, and a detailed Teaching Statement. I will use the Statement section to outline my teaching strategies, how I implemented them at UMaine, and how I improved them over time. Since I have only been teaching for a few months at UMaine, my current Teaching Statement includes a lot of strategies which have been implemented only once so far. My Statement will refine over time as I have more to add to it, as I work out the kinks in my course materials, and as I incorporate new aspects of learning and application into my pedagogy.
Teaching Statements are not confidential (assuming they do not contain sensitive information), but are generally only shared at the request and by the discretion of the faculty member. Each tenure-granting institution is unique, and departments weigh criteria differently, thus Statements can’t really be directly compared between faculty. That being said, I thought it would be beneficial to share some of my content and the process, in part because I might as well get the extra credit for writing a blog post on content I have already generated, but also because I feel that transparency can improve my competency and academia in general.
