Teaching and Mentoring
Teaching
Dr. Liz’s Teaching Philosophy
Dr. Liz’s numerous, diverse teaching experiences have converged to influence her philosophy of teaching, the central tenet of which focuses on student empowered learning whereby she, as a learning facilitator, provide opportunities for students to direct their own content acquisition using innovative approaches and venues. Two strategies support this philosophy.
The first involves incentivizing student investment in their academic performance and success of the course. To encourage student input and buy-in, Dr. Liz seeks out ways to give students control of their learning experience. For instance, Dr. Liz regularly leaves empty spaces in the course schedule so that students can recommend topics that will be addressed within the framework of the course objectives (e.g. biological basis of psychopathy). As well, prior to every exam, she hosts a “review” day (with snacks!) in which groups of students devise communal study guides of course-critical content from which exam questions are drawn; these study guides are available online. Given the success of this approach, Dr. Liz plans to expand upon these past efforts to collaborate with students to design not just the exams; more broadly, Dr. Liz wants to empower students to design the course they wish to take by also providing students opportunities for input on term projects requirements and assessment criteria. As well, given the integral role of feedback in science, exam formats will consist of free response blanks and essay questions with an opportunity to revise their responses based on instructor input and resubmit for partial added credit, an approach she believes will be especially effective at enhancing learning among upper level undergraduate/graduate students.
The second component involves optimizing academic resource access by promoting supplemental and alternative learning platforms. The global pandemic has instituted a paradigm shift in the way we engage in education. To enhance the depth with which students can engage with and be assessed on course content, Dr. Liz’s hopes to digitize lecture-style presentations to “flip the classroom”, enabling in-person class meetings to reinforce practical application of new knowledge. Further, Dr. Liz has experience engaging with students via multiple modalities including online social media venues (i.e., course Facebook group). This serves to crowd-source the learning environment to promote students supporting each other in their knowledge acquisition and engaging the broader non-scientific community (namely “friends”) to participate in the discussion. Importantly this approach is particularly beneficial for students who are not engaging in education full-time, for those with family responsibilities, or those who otherwise may have barriers preventing their in-person engagement with the education system.
Classroom Teaching Experience
Dr. Liz has experience teaching and coordinating a wide array of psychology and neuroscience courses. These include:
Introduction to Psychology
Introduction to Statistical Analysis
Psychological Research Methods
Physiological Psychology/Biological Basis of Behavior
Neuroanatomy
Neurobiology of Aging
Neuroimmunology
Neuropharmacology
Neuroendocrinology
Rodent Behavioral Methods
Translational Stroke Research
Journal Club (Neuroscience, Immunology)
Mentoring
Dr. Liz is committed to engaging in high quality mentoring of the next generation of neuroscientists, one neuron, one brain, one person at a time. She is primarily focused on advancing the careers of women and people from underprivileged backgrounds. This is because while women make up approximately half of neuroscience professionals (Holeman et al., 2018), according to a report in Nature (2018), women are listed as corresponding authors on only 1 in 5 manuscripts, the female reviewer pool is ~20%, and only ¼ of neuro-related tenure-track faculty are women. In addition, though gains have been made in recent years, only 22% of the total science and engineering degrees are awarded to people of color and those of underprivileged backgrounds (NSF, 2019). Dr. Liz’s role as an AAAS IF/THEN Ambassador and the sections below speak to her commitment to addressing diversity in neuroscience by serving as a role model for all future neuroscientists, especially girls, people of color, and those from underprivileged backgrounds.
Example mentoring activities. From top left: Liz’s Lab Summer Undergraduate Research (SURE) Fellow Liza Grossman and Research Apprentice Program participant Brishti White present a poster at the SURE symposium, a WVU Rodent Behavior Core user, Divine Nwafor, presents his poster at the Southeast IDEA state conference, a Liz’s Lab summer INBRE undergraduate student, Heather Kiblinger, displays her work, WVU Stroke T32 graduate trainees, a Liz’s Lab Honor’s thesis student, Sara Nayeem, presents her work at the WV State Capitol and was acknowledged by a staffer from Senator McKinley’s office.
Liz’s Lab
Dr. Liz is committed to engaging in high quality mentoring of the next generation of scientists, especially women and people from underprivileged backgrounds. As a former mentor for the WVU INBRE program and WVU Research Apprentice Program, and currently the Tulane Undergraduate Neuroscience Association, Dr. Liz consistently recruits undergraduate volunteers to gain experience in her research lab. She follows a philosophy of side-by-side collaboration while students execute their experiments. Dr. Liz also prioritizes accessibility and ensures that student research assistants have regular one-on-one meetings with her to talk about a variety of topics both within and outside the lab. Finally, Dr. Liz values open communication and provides regular (at least monthly) feedback on areas of success and growth potential to support goals. Dr. Liz strongly believes that by promoting a lab culture of open communication, this creates a welcoming and supportive environment in which trainees can grow.
WVU Neuroscience Club
Dr. Liz became the advisor to the WVU Neuroscience Club in 2014, shortly after beginning her postdoctoral fellowship. In this role, she mentored club members in the leadership of their organization and helped them implement meetings and activities to facilitate their access to neuroscience research opportunities. As well, Dr. Liz led the development of their community outreach program, helping them coordinate visits to schools and community centers, acquire supply funding via grants, and training volunteer presenters to teach the repertoire of activities. These efforts helped not only to fulfill academic requirements for service or providing a line on their resumes, but also helped undergraduate students just entering the field of neuroscience further their own content understanding and provided Club members with leadership, teaching, and organization experiences that benefit a range of careers. These activities were recognized by the Neuroscience Club being named Best WVU Student Organization in 2015, by newspaper articles published by the Daily Athenaeum and the Dominion Post, and by Dr. Liz’s nominations for the WVU Faculty Award for Distinction in Mentoring Undergraduates in Research in 2017 and 2018.
WVU Rodent Behavior Core
In support of NIH goals for trainee development, namely to promote strength in study design and data analytics, Dr. Liz has expertise in teaching research methods and statistics and regularly consulted with WVU scientists in this regard in her role as Director of the WVU Rodent Behavior Core. Indeed, she have designed a comprehensive behavior project “from design to dissemination” workflow to support investigators and trainees new to the conduct of functional assessments in the ethical, rigorous, and efficient execution of their experiments involving rodents. These efforts supported the publication of 30 manuscripts, the submission of more than 60 grant proposals, and the dissertation work of dozens of graduate/medical trainees.
WVU T32 Training Grants
In addition to active participation in WVU T32 programs as preceptor, Dr. Liz has served as co-Director for the WVU T32 graduate training grant supporting the study of stroke and its comorbidities. As part of her co-directorship of this program, she oversees the annual student-hosted WVU Stroke T32 symposium, serves as coordinator for their stroke journal club, co-taught the summer course (Stroke Research from Bench to Bedside), and facilitated community outreach opportunities for the trainees.
