Teaching Philosophy

Teaching in Plant Pathology presents a unique challenge. The diversity of student backgrounds necessitates that an instructor know fundamentals of the discipline and experimental processes enough to introduce them as well as to respond to more advanced concerns. Teaching in the agricultural and environmental sciences offers a chance to illustrate larger lessons about how the natural world can unfold before a discerning eye and yet how closely tied all things truly are. It offers opportunities to expand students’ understanding about the ways in which scientific methods and research can positively shape the quality and quantity of the crops and plants we grow as well as to teach the means by which these practices can work to reduce negative impacts of our cultivation systems on the environment.

Materials and Methods
To assist students directly, I make myself available to them for advising and counsel. I let my students know that they can count on me for a prompt, helpful, and reliable answer. I try to provide concrete resources, examples, and comparisons that will help students to draw connections between their own areas of expertise and the discipline of plant pathology.

To maintain and expand students’ understanding and interest, I strive to distill what I have learned and ground it in concepts that students new to the discipline are likely to understand and care about. This refinement process enables me to broaden my own understanding of these principles as I explain, clarify, and link them to students’ own experience.

As I accumulate experience teaching and working with students, I seek new ways to help students improve their ability to understand and retain the information presented in the course. Often in plant pathology, this can be achieved by experiential and tactile learning in a lab setting, where students can seek out solutions or learn protocols best through practice. Even when there is little or no lab component to a given course, I try to develop practices in which student participation can be used to supplement uni-directional, lecture-style learning.

Results and Discussion
The methods described above create multiple opportunities for students to express concepts in their own terms and receive appropriate feedback, which may help to correct misconceptions that might otherwise be overlooked until test-time, to supplement students’ basic understanding with more detail, or simply to provide positive reinforcement for a lesson well-learned.
With discussion and acknowledgment of their understanding, students will develop feelings of confidence in association with the learning process, a sense of success in learning that will help them in any subject at any level -- but that will hopefully earn a particular place in their hearts for plant pathology.

Fostering participation and enhancing the role of communication as a learning tool are critical to a teacher in any subject. I encourage students, peers, and superiors to give me as much feedback as possible. Then I work to implement their ideas or to resolve deficiencies or problems. If I can become better at accepting and using constructive criticism, I can use the experiences to develop my own abilities as a student, teacher, and researcher.

I feel that one of my greatest duties as a plant pathologist is to discuss my area of expertise with others and invite them to see just how far-reaching work and research can be in this interdisciplinary discipline which blends with and incorporates elements of many fields including agronomy, horticulture, microbiology, (macro)biology, genetics, chemistry, and ecology.