Teaching | cwoods

Brief Teaching Philosphy

Teaching is a central interest of mine and the main reason I chose to work at a small, liberal arts institution. As a teacher, I aim to create an inclusive, hands-on classroom that exposes students to a diverse array of experiences and relevant information while building community and promoting intellectual confidence and critical thinking.

I enjoy sharing knowledge and creating ideas with students in my classes. Thus, I invite students into conversation quite often and teach with a lot of energy and enthusiasm (I’m honestly and genuinely excited by the material in the classes I teach). I also use storytelling of my own experiences and scientists that are underrepresented in STEM fields (BiPOC and women; many of which are my own friends and colleagues) to highlight that no single group has dominion over scientific inquiry and practice. I ground classroom materials in real world applications to make the content as relevant to the students as possible.

The single most important aspect of my teaching is making students feel that they are worthy of being in the class because this is what develops intellectual confidence. As a teacher, I believe that it is my responsibility to present a clear and relevant understanding of a topic while also providing opportunities for intellectual growth in an open and unthreatening environment that facilitates student engagement. As a result, I use constructivist teaching strategies that encourage student involvement as much as possible by providing possibilities to build knowledge rather than have it solely transferred directly from me. This approach to teaching moves the focus from content to the student, which builds stronger teacher-student relationships and increases retention.

I value the development of quantitative analysis skills in all my students because it increases confidence and develops critical thinking skills. For example, when first reading scientific papers, most students accept the methods, results, and conclusions of a study because they lack the understanding of how to interpret the analyses of the results. Understanding what statistical tests were done and how to interpret them (e.g., by understanding what a p-value and a test statistic are), gives them the ability to critically assess the paper on a much deeper level. This often builds confidence in reading the scientific literature, which makes science overall more accessible.

BIOL112: Evolution and the Diversity of Life

The vast diversity of life is amazing. This course provides a general overview of the history and diversity of life as well as the processes and mechanisms – evolution – that lead to this diversity. The course emphasizes some of the fundamental aspects of organismal biology such as reproduction, feeding, and locomotion (or lack thereof). In lecture, principles common to diverse taxonomic groups are presented with specific examples taken from different organisms.

Taught Fall 2015. Fall 2016, Fall 2019, Fall 2021

BIOL211: General Ecology

This course covers the ecology of individuals, populations, communities, and ecosystems and develops an understanding of ecological theory, quantitative skills by learning and using mathematical and computer models to understand ecological processes, and quantitative and graphical skills by analyzing and presenting data collected from an independent research project. Students are introduced to R using Rcmdr to run univariate statistics.

Taught Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2022, Fall 2022

BIOL411: Advanced Ecology

This self-designed course provides an in-depth examination of major ecological fields, including ecophysiology, island biogeography, community ecology and ecosystem ecology. Current ecological research is used to introduce major concepts and methods, foster critical thinking and discussion, and to introduce issues of experimental design and analysis, and different approaches to ecology. This course enhances skills that are critical for ecologists including written and oral communication skills, quantitative and programming skills. Students use RStudio and R to run both univariate and mutlvariate statistics.

Taught Spring 2016, Spring 2018; Spring 2023

BIOL377: Field Botany

This self-designed course explores non-vascular and vascular plant diversity focusing on plant evolutionary relationships and identification of local flora. Botany is explored through field trips, field journals, drawings, and the creation of a herbarium collection.

Taught Spring 2019

Other Courses

BIOL355: Plant Physiology (taught at Colgate University)

This self-designed course investigates the physiological mechanisms and processes that direct and influence plant growth and development and allow plants to grow and survive under the highly variable conditions found in nature. This course also highlights plant adaptations to deal with environmental stresses.

CORE110: Discovering Biology: Food for Thought (taught at Colgate University)

This self-designed course challenges students to think about where their food comes from, how it gets to them, and how food has shaped human history. The premise for the course is that eating has agricultural, health, social and ecological impacts. We must, therefore, evaluate the consequences of what we eat. We discuss many topics that are relevant today, such as genetically modified organisms, agricultural pollution, and local farming, and focus mostly on plants. We use all of this information and in-class discussions and hands-on projects to answer the question that Michael Pollan poses in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, “How do we decide what to eat?”