I have gained my ability to tutor by living the last 28 years as a science professor. The skills I have learned in the classroom and in my laboratory have combined into a unique understanding on the importance of teaching one student at a time. I have taught at university level since 1991. My initial course offering was in general biochemistry taught at a 400/500 level which meant that more than 2/3 of the class were graduate students. Since then I have continued to teach general biochemistry...
I have gained my ability to tutor by living the last 28 years as a science professor. The skills I have learned in the classroom and in my laboratory have combined into a unique understanding on the importance of teaching one student at a time. I have taught at university level since 1991. My initial course offering was in general biochemistry taught at a 400/500 level which meant that more than 2/3 of the class were graduate students. Since then I have continued to teach general biochemistry (undergraduate and graduate level) and several advanced courses that included extensive laboratory exercises.
During my years as an academic and as principal investigator and professor in these subjects, I have developed a very strong sense of the classroom and laboratory as a vital two-way communication medium. The students come with various backgrounds, commitments and goals yet all of them are passed through the filter of a specific topical discipline. What I have learned to do is to alter the flow rate for the dissemination of the discipline and more importantly, to add cognitive adjuvant to the epistemological elixir. In order to pass through the system, a facilitated diffusion in the form of interpretive stories, clinical examples, kinetic metaphors, mechanistic anecdotes and friendly candor on the limits of science have been judiciously added.
I have found that students tend to learn when they are challenged and motivated. As their professor, I have found that my enthusiasm and depth of subject perception can strengthen their commitment to learn. It is been my experience that people learn in a classroom setting by experiencing the contact hours as something special, rarefied and healthy. Students want to feel as though their time in the lecture hall or in study sections or lab bench is a phenomenon of free will. There is a cognitive connection and emotional attachment to the material being presented when knowledge is being transferred. To obtain that positive affect in the classroom, you need to be turned on by the subject and engaged in the real time interaction of the moment. It’s not always easy to do this. You can have a bad day and sometimes some of the students may be having problems in their lives. Sometimes though, the diversion of the subject matter is just enough to suspend those real life issues. I have experienced this many times and my students have told me the same.
Besides this natural tendency in the classroom to share an hour of mutual fascination with a subject like intermediary metabolism or protein secondary structure or whatever the topic of the day, there is an existential aspect of learning that provides a personal satisfaction. A full appreciation of this learning experience involves an internal strength which comes from self determination and the exercise of free will where education is seen as a personal commitment that defines the individual and which can bring out the very best in them. Ultimately, both the professor and the students learn something totally new, every semester.
I have regularly worked in cross-disciplinary modules with faculty in Biology, Chemistry, Plant Science, Dentistry, Exercise Physiology, Nutrition and Medicine.
I am qualified and motivated to teach several upper division biology and biochemistry courses at the level of a seasoned and confident scholar who simultaneously is humbled by the science and more significantly, by the privilege to teach another day.
