Teaching
It is a rewarding experience to engage with students and help them meet objectives. As a teacher, I strive to inspire future leaders and innovators by encouraging critical thinking and collaboration, as well as by facilitating an inclusive and resilient classroom environment in which students can question, learn, create, and share knowledge. My mentoring approach is based on the individual student's learning styles and objectives. My primary goal is to enhance understanding through effective guidance while emphasizing creative problem solving, collection and synthesis of quality data, idea generation, and strong science communication.
In the end…we will love only what we understand,
and we will understand only what we are taught.
-Baba Dioum
Soils
Instructing the labs for the Forest Soils and Introduction to Soil Science courses at the University of Alberta was usually a hands-on experience where my motto was "let's get dirty." In response to the COVID-19 global pandemic, I restructured all Forest Soils labs and redeveloped all materials for a fully online delivery. Although hands-on is the ideal delivery for some of the labs, all the resources are now available virtually for future students, providing a greater range of options for course delivery and student learning. A hybrid delivery proved to be highly effective in improving student learning outcomes and their overall experience.
Geographical Information Systems
Teaching labs and assisting students with projects for natural-resource-based GIS applications courses at the University of Alberta was a great opportunity to practice techniques and help students learn valuable new skills for their careers. My aim was to help make the labs more engaging and relevant, as well as increase the value of project outcomes for students. There was no better feeling than completing a semester with dozens of students expressing confidence and excitement in what they had learned and achieved!
Environmental Science
Working as a team to teach thousands of students through the Environmental Science course at the University of Washington was a rewarding challenge and has been a good example to follow as far as making online courses interactive, engaging, and relevant to students.