A major driver in my scientific career is inspiring young people to get curious and excited about nature. As such, mentoring high school and undergraduate students in microbial ecology is one of my main professional passions. I am also really interested in pedagogical practices, and aim to use a progressivist/reconstructionist philosophy (i.e. a philosophy that emphasizing holistic, experiential learning and social equity) in my teaching. I currently engage with students in the following ways:
Mentoring students in microbial ecology research
I also co-mentor undergraduates Anastasia Karp and Ryan Li on a project about bacterial communities in native wildflowers with fellow GGE Ph.D. candidate Rebecca Nelson.
I previously mentored the following students:
- Summer 2023: Karen Barragan (1st year Microbiology transfer student, former Woodland Community College student through the WCC-MURSP)
- Summer 2023: Carina Lopez (Woodland Community College student through the WCC-MURSP)
- Fall 2022 to Spring 2023: Alexander Velasco (3rd year in Global Disease Biology)
- Winter and Spring 2022: Rudy Mahajan (student at Davis Senior High School)
- Winter 2021: Shruti Parikh (rotating PhD student in the Microbiology Graduate Group)
- Fall 2019-Spring 2020: Jacob Buckner (honors undergraduate student at Oregon State University)
Designing graduate-level participatory seminars
Currently, I have led two participatory seminars in the Ecology Graduate Group (aka ECL 290s). These seminars consist of graduate students and faculty sponsors discussing papers related to a topic of interest. These seminars are taken for course credit, and I was responsible for writing the syllabus and facilitating class meetings. My seminars were on the following:
ECL 290 (Fall 2022): Biology and Ecology of Plant Reproduction
ECL 290 (Spring 2021): Theoretical Models in Metacommunity Ecology
ECL 290 (Fall 2022): Biology and Ecology of Plant Reproduction
- Faculty sponsors: Dr. Susan Harrison, Dr. Rachel Vannette and Dr. Neal Williams
- Listed as instructor of record for the course
- 13 students participated from the Ecology, Population Biology and Microbiology Graduate Groups
ECL 290 (Spring 2021): Theoretical Models in Metacommunity Ecology
- Faculty sponsors: Dr. Alan Hastings, Dr. Marcel Holyoak
- 6 students participated from the Ecology and Population Biology Graduate Groups