Chava Weitzman - Ecologist and Evolutionary Biologist
While I was in undergrad, I experienced what most of us do in our undergraduate educations: some educators are extremely gifted at teaching, while others aren’t. Whether a university has large or small class sizes, and whether the driving force of the university is research or teaching, I believe that an instructor’s priority in the classroom should be promoting student learning. Sounds obvious, right? It should be, but isn’t necessarily how all classrooms work.
As many career paths in ecology and evolution lead to teaching in some capacity, I strive to do it well. In 2013, I attended the National Academies Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education (NASI) at West Virginia University and am now a National Academies Education Fellow. I try to incorporate many of the methods I learned at NASI in my classroom.
Many graduate students in the sciences expect to wind up with professorial positions, which require teaching, without any training on how to actually teach. After returning from NASI, I decided to instruct a graduate course for future college faculty and share all that I had learned at NASI. This course was faculty-sponsored by Dr. Guy Hoelzer in the spring of 2014, and some of my students from that course paid it forward and retaught the course in spring 2016.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE:
University of Nevada, Reno
Instructor:
Herpetology, BIOL 432/632, Spring 2015, Spring 2017 (co-taught with Dr. C. Richard Tracy)
Scholarly Teaching for Future College Faculty, BIOL 792, Spring 2014 (faculty sponsor Dr.
Guy Hoelzer)
Herpetology Lab, BIOL 432/621, Spring 2014
Teaching Assistant:
Ecology and Population Biology, BIOL 314, Fall 2014, Fall 2016
General Microbiology, BIOL 251, Fall 2016
Organismal Biology, BIOL 191, Fall 2011, Fall 2014
Comparative Animal Physiology, BIOL 315, Fall 2011
Guest Lectures:
University of Hawai’i at Manoa – Reptile/Amphibian Conservation and Management, 2018
Indiana University, Bloomington – Biodiversity, 2017
Bard College at Simon’s Rock – Ecology, 2017
University of Nevada, Reno – Ecology and Population Biology, 2013, 2014, 2016
As many career paths in ecology and evolution lead to teaching in some capacity, I strive to do it well. In 2013, I attended the National Academies Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education (NASI) at West Virginia University and am now a National Academies Education Fellow. I try to incorporate many of the methods I learned at NASI in my classroom.
Many graduate students in the sciences expect to wind up with professorial positions, which require teaching, without any training on how to actually teach. After returning from NASI, I decided to instruct a graduate course for future college faculty and share all that I had learned at NASI. This course was faculty-sponsored by Dr. Guy Hoelzer in the spring of 2014, and some of my students from that course paid it forward and retaught the course in spring 2016.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE:
University of Nevada, Reno
Instructor:
Herpetology, BIOL 432/632, Spring 2015, Spring 2017 (co-taught with Dr. C. Richard Tracy)
Scholarly Teaching for Future College Faculty, BIOL 792, Spring 2014 (faculty sponsor Dr.
Guy Hoelzer)
Herpetology Lab, BIOL 432/621, Spring 2014
Teaching Assistant:
Ecology and Population Biology, BIOL 314, Fall 2014, Fall 2016
General Microbiology, BIOL 251, Fall 2016
Organismal Biology, BIOL 191, Fall 2011, Fall 2014
Comparative Animal Physiology, BIOL 315, Fall 2011
Guest Lectures:
University of Hawai’i at Manoa – Reptile/Amphibian Conservation and Management, 2018
Indiana University, Bloomington – Biodiversity, 2017
Bard College at Simon’s Rock – Ecology, 2017
University of Nevada, Reno – Ecology and Population Biology, 2013, 2014, 2016