So, I have some exciting changes and news! Starting Monday I will be teaching two undergraduate classes at USC this Fall! I recently changed positions at USC as a postdoctoral researcher (studying parasite-host interactions in the marine phytoplankton community) to a new postdoctoral teaching fellow position. As much as I love research, I really missed teaching and mentoring and wanted to dive deep into teaching to gain more experience as an instructor of record.
I will be teaching an upper division Ecology course with a lab (BISC 315), and a lower division Environmental Studies course (ENST100). I’ll also be participating in USC’s CET New Faculty Institute , a faculty development program. I’m super stoked, and have been hustling for the past month to modify and design the curriculum and get all of the materials ready for the Ecology lab course. I thought most of my time would be modifying and designing new lectures and labs…. and I’ve definitely had some surprises along the way regarding where all of my time goes:
- It takes a lot of time to prep a lab room/facility if by chance you are ‘lucky’ enough to have a lab that does’t have a lab manager…. The benefits are that I don’t need to share the lab w/ too many other classes.. so I can leave things set up from time to time. Plus my TA can use the lab as her office hours! Cons- it is up to me to fix everything and get everything ready for the semester! So I definitely spent some time on tasks like getting rid of that old whiteboard that doesn’t erase anymore and fixing the new one that somehow arrived broken (thanks to the hubby for the latter!). On the same note- all of that old hazardous waste in the fume hood.. yup- need to condense it and call EH&S to whisk it away. ….Those old dead snails that have been rotting in the back of the room for over 6 months.. .yea I put those in the dumpster. That cart with some strange devices that look like broken microscopes.. turns out nobody knows who it belongs to.. but it can’t be thrown away. I think that one will just get put in storage…. Oh and then the broken Monitor that we need to use for presentations…thank goodness for IT support…
- Then there is the ordering and organizing of all of the supplies for each lab. Which means you have to modify or design labs and fully prep all of the lab instructions and hand outs before the semester starts (which is a good thing anyhow). I did this… and I even made sure we had phase-contrast microscopes before I designed a lab. However I learned a big lesson- always physically check out the equipment before you spend all of the time designing a lab and handouts! Turns out – the phase-contrast microscopes that we have available for our teaching labs don’t have 20X objectives. Later I learned it is standard for most microscopes to only have 4X 10X 40X and 100X.. and I guess 20X is rare.. who knew!?! Unfortunately, one of the labs I spent a couple days designing (including all the handouts, instructions and reading materials)- requires 20X objectives lens… oops! So had to scrap that one and cut my losses. In the end it worked out and I extended a lab on insect diversity instead which I think will be better anyhow. On this note- I am super grateful to the Entomology Curator, Brian Brown, at the Natural History Museum for donating some of their no-data insects for my class insect collection. Im planning on putting them on a backdrop of the phylogeny and evolution of insects (Misof et al. 2014, Science) so students can see the different adaptations that have evolved through time in the Class Insecta.
- Lastly there are the little things- like moving into a new office and setting up the space so that it is beneficial for office hours; learning how to use the departmental printer/copier; going to all of the classrooms and making sure my computer connects properly (and organizing those chairs in the classroom since it looks like a rave recently happened!); and meeting with teachers and TAs that taught the classes in previous years so that I can get the run-down on what worked and what didn’t work.
Then when I do actually have time to work on my lectures.. I find myself going down rabbit holes of finding cool documentaries for my Environmental Studies lectures, such as my new one on the interactions of society, culture and the environment- (Check out this cool documentary series on Native Americans and their stewardship of the land and waters); or going through all of the scientific literature on interesting topics that I am incorporating into my lectures such as sex-changing fish for my ecology lecture on mating behavior and sexual selection (which by the way is how I got interested in ecology in the first place over 20 years ago!.. oh geez Im getting old!)
Anyhow… Monday is right around the corner.. so with that Im going to start uploading everything onto our online BlackBoard system… here we go!
Ps- if any of my students are reading this— don’t worry- I got this! You are in good hands… ha ha ha.
Dr. Julie V. Hopper 