I consider myself lucky to have the mentors, professors, and graduate students in my circle that have provided guidance along my journey in academia. It is important to me that I provide opportunities for undergraduate students to gain an appreciation for biology and to conduct research.

Teaching

When teaching biology 1 and 2 labs, I was responsible for creating quizzes, introduction, and conclusion powerpoints and for ensuring that the labs ran smoothly and safely! I really enjoyed walking around the lab to have conversations with students about the how what we were doing was exciting and relevant, or just to hear how their week was going. Biology 2 lab was my favorite course to teach because it was all about organismal diversity! Convincing 24 students (a lot of them pre-med) that learning the taxonomy and distinguishing characteristics of single-celled organisms, plants, and animals was valuable to their future was not always easy, but I believe my enthusiasm for the subject and providing general studying and writing tips that could be applied outside biology ended up with most students enjoying lab.

I have also been a teaching assistant for non-majors in an online setting. Dr. Asha Rao designed this course to be a modern source of biological information. I grade weekly assignments, quizzes and discussion posts for 100-150 students. Modules cover topics like stem cell research, antibiotic resistance, and GMOs. My favorite part of teaching this course is reading the student's discussion posts about topics they admit they had not researched prior to forming an opinion, but after reading the information presented in the module they write about how their previous conceptions were ill-informed.

Mentorship

I had the opportunity to conduct an independent research project as an undergraduate student with Dr. Emily DuVal and Dr. Carla Vanderbilt at Florida State University. Not only did they provide me with guidance on designing projects in animal behavior and analyzing data, they provided mentorship about what being in academia was really like and helped me with the graduate school application process. Without them I would not be on the path I am today, and I hope to provide opportunities for undergraduate students so they can achieve things they didn't think were possible.