Teaching Philosophy and Experience

Teaching Philosophy

"Education is the most powerful tool which you can use to change the world" - Nelson Mandela

I truly believe this statement, that education is the true and only path to change. I know from experience that I have been blessed with opportunities that many promising young people don’t receive, and I want to use my education and privilege to help future students. My teaching philosophy centers on creating a safe and structured space for students of all backgrounds to feel valued and inspired. I believe that all people are individuals with unique talents, and as a professor, I will get to know my students and work with them to help them figure out their academic and professional passions. Then, I will engage them in pursuing problems that are important to them, while offering them opportunities to utilize their talents and helping them work on the areas they are deficient in, known as holistic mentoring.

My teaching goals include:

1. Create a safe and structured learning environment

2. Promote creative learning, problem solving, and teamwork

3. Incorporate issues of health equity/DEI into engineering curriculum without sacrificing scientific rigor

In addition to these three goals, I also believe it is important for engineers to have a strong fundamental background in math and writing and will foster development of these skills through assignments as well.

Teaching Experience

Ensuring Health Equity in Engineering Design, BME 385J

As a Provost Early Career Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Texas at Austin, I developed a brand-new course “BME 385J Ensuring Health Equity in Engineering Design” with Dr. Elizabeth Cosgriff-Hernandez and Dr. Mykel Green. For this course, we created lectures that focus on our 10 Rules for Engineers to Ensure Health Equity, published in PLOS Computational Biology. We also organized seminar speakers that are experts in this area, organized interactive activities for each class, and helped students re-write and present their research through the lens of health equity. This opportunity has helped me learn much more about course development and what goes into being a successful teacher.

Our class focuses on principles from our paper: Lanier OL*, Green M*, Barabino G, Cosgriff-Hernandez E. (2022). 10 Rules for Engineers to Improve Health Equity, PLOS Computational Biology

Curated list of publications related to promoting diverse engineering workforce and health equity design.

Other Experience

University of Florida: TA for undergraduate cell lab and graduate physiology (UF BME), co-instructor of an introductory BME class to high school students for college credit through the UF Student Science Training Program