I am currently a first year postdoctoral scholar at Georgia Tech, in the School of Biological Sciences, where I am designing and implementing lecture and lab curricula for non-biology majors in an open-education resources (OER) type setting, incorporating graphing materials in the classroom, along with understanding the role of graphs in a lecture setting. I got my doctoral degree from Purdue University, where I researched the reasoning associated with graph choice and construction between expert biology professors and novice biology undergraduate students; developed learning and instructional materials that can improve students' graph choice and construction; and tested the impact of these materials in various classrooms.
Taking classes and immersing myself in research and teaching experiences at Tech prepared me for my next steps in academia. In the research lab, I was challenged to ask relevant questions, read primary literature, design relevant experiments, collect valid data, learn visual and statistical software for analysis, transform data into presentable formats, and communicate my findings in poster oral presentations, which culminated in an honors thesis. Getting the opportunity to teach first-year biology labs also influenced my decision to pursue a graduate degree in biology education. I enjoyed watching first year students design and execute inquiry-based lab experiments, exchange ideas with each other, and as an instructor, I enjoyed collecting formative feedback to improve students' knowledge with biology content, perfect lab techniques, all the while improving my own instruction.
Acquire and refine critical thinking and reasoning skills as they are essential for all future terminal degrees and jobs. During your time at Georgia Tech, find out what makes you excited and happy on a daily basis and pick a career that you would like to pursue. Perform extensive research on the type of career that you would like and spend your time at Tech acquiring and perfecting as many new skills as you can. Consult the counselors at career services and network with past alumni. Do not be afraid to venture outside of the school of biology to try new classes and seek new opportunities. Georgia Tech is an excellent place to enroll in diverse engineering, management, and humanities courses or explore cross-disciplinary research. Go Jackets!
