In August of 2023, I started as a joint-department Teaching Assistant Professor within the Biology Teaching and Learning (BTL) and Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development (GCD) departments. How this works on paper is that my appointment is 25% with BTL, which equals teaching one class, and 75% with GCD, which equals teaching three classes. By coincidence, my current schedule ends up with a fairly equal amount of time spent on activities for both departments each semester. In the fall semester, I teach one class for BTL (Human Biology) and one for GCD (Cell Biology), attend both department meetings, and attend the GCD Fall Seminar Series. In the spring semester, I will teach two classes for GCD (Genetics and Histology), attend both department meetings, attend the BTL Spring Seminar Series, and attend the BTL Department Retreat in January.
There are many benefits to a joint-department teaching professor position, ranging from financial (benefits both departments to share the financial burden) to having the opportunity to work with a broad range of colleagues across two departments. There are many different strengths and interests among the individual BTL and GCD faculty, post-doctoral researchers, and graduate students, and that diversity is amazing, allowing me to be able to learn new things, network to find other people interested in similar topics, and find collaborations. Some other benefits include more diverse opportunities for teaching, based upon both the topic and the diversity of students. For example, my BTL course (Human Biology) is a 1000-level general education course with students of any possible major that might be in any year of their college experience. My GCD courses are all 4000-level, and the students are predominantly CBS students in their second to fourth year. Because of the differences in student populations between my classes, my work requires a wide range of teaching and instructional methodologies, providing me the opportunity to implement different strategies that are tailored to each class.
Another benefit to both the departments and the instructor is the opportunity to teach one or more courses with another instructor. Having a co-instructor leads to shared knowledge, thinking of new ideas or approaches, improving one’s teaching, and providing an opportunity to develop a collegial relationship with another faculty member. I have a co-instructor for both my BTL course and one of my GCD courses. Generally, the first time a new faculty member teaches a course, the co-instructor is a more experienced member of the department who will also serve as a mentor.
Last year, I participated in BTL’s POET (Peer Observation to Enhance Teaching) Program. For my portion, I chose to focus on how to incorporate active learning and current best practices in biology teaching pedagogy into a GCD course that I inherited. The POET Program was able to match me up with BTL’s Tamar Resnick, who had the content knowledge, active learning and biology pedagogy knowledge, and expertise needed. I was fortunate to also receive content-specific advice from GCD’s Mary Porter on what information to keep, what topics to cut, which topics students struggle the most with, and how to best help students with challenging concepts. Having the resources and support to be able to tackle a new-to-me course from both a BTL and GCD lens has and will continue to help build a more robust course with diverse modes of learning that incorporate increased active learning while retaining the fundamental student learning objectives. This type of collaboration and information sharing is essential in developing well-rounded instructors while providing skills to not only receive mentoring, but to be a successful future mentor to others. –Emily Flynn
Emily Flynn is a teaching assistant professor in the Department of Biology Teaching and Learning and the Department of Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development.