Teaching |
I have a deep affection for nature and my primary goal as an instructor is to stimulate appreciation for biodiversity and scientific thinking. I believe that more accessible education in evolutionary and environmental sciences is essential to cultivate a collaborative and sustainable global community in the face of the rapidly changing global environment.
Like many other scholars in the field, I spent much of my childhood outdoors, digging, touching, smelling, and observing. I was born in a quite populated city along the east coast of China. Even in such urbanized environment, I had a lot of fun observing the ants, the sparrows, and the street trees. These activities sparkled my interest in biology and later motivated me to pursue a career in this field. Indeed, I think the education of organismal biology should serve two purposes: first, to gain understanding of a group of organisms to excite our desire for admiration and preservation; second, to inspire generalizable principles in biology based on the knowledge obtained from a specific group. Introducing herbarium/museum collections and field trips are the most effective and powerful approaches to achieve these goals. I had the rewarding experience teaching Plant Systematics at Harvard University. The class was composed of three elements: the lecture introduced basic concepts in evolutionary biology; the lab provided opportunities to examine specimens and living plants; then the field trip brought students to Brazil where they quickly connected the abstract concepts to real-life examples—fire adaptation in Caatinga, evolution of pollination syndromes, and the assembly of dry forest communities. We were also extremely lucky to have Brazilian students and local park rangers join our trip. From them, we learned about the vulnerability of dry forest ecosystems and the challenges behind the conservation of national parks due to education and income inequality of local farmers. We live in an era with unprecedented rate of global change. Building a sustainable society is more urgent than ever and promoting educational equity is the first step. As a researcher and an instructor, I have observed the many ways that a diverse team and collective minds make better science. As an international student, I deeply understand the importance of inclusive teaching and it is a foundational intention that shapes my pedagogy approach. I am committed to create an inclusive and supporting classroom where students thrive regardless of their gender, religion, and skin color. Classes I have taught: Instructor, California's Cornucopia, UC Riverside, Summer 2021 Teaching Fellow, Animal Behavior, Harvard University, Spring 2019 Teaching Fellow, Plant Systematics, Harvard University, Spring 2018* Teaching Fellow, Plants and Human Affairs, Harvard University, Fall 2016* Teaching Fellow, Evolutionary Human Physiology and Anatomy, Harvard University, Fall 2015 *Teaching award received |
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Outreach@museum |
Since the spring of 2019, I joined the Science Education Partners Program at Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. The program included a three-day workshop to help attendees develop professional skills to communicate science with K–12 students and the general public. During the training, I found that compare to animal collections, herbarium collections are much less known to the public—many people don't even know how plant specimens are preserved. I have since then worked closely with Amy Gunzelmann and Wendy Derjue-Holzer from the museum education team to design display booth and interactive classes to promote the value of herbaria collections, especially those from my home institute Harvard University Herbaria. We put together programs to showcase the crucial importance of herbaria collections for tracking climate change and read Thoreau's nature journals with museum visitors to compare changes in flowering time over the century.
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