Five UC Berkeley faculty have been selected as recipients of the 2025 Distinguished Teaching Award, the campus’s most prestigious honor for teaching.
The award recognizes teaching that incites intellectual curiosity in students, engages them thoroughly in the enterprise of learning, and has a lifelong impact. The Academic Senate’s Committee on Teaching has selected:
- Helen Bateup, Associate Professor, Neuroscience
- Dan Garcia, Teaching Professor, Computer Science
- Kranthi Mandadapu, Associate Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
- Mark Sandberg, Professor, Scandinavian and Film and Media
- Sarah Stanley, Associate Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology
The extraordinary expertise, curiosity, inclusiveness, and passion of this year’s recipients remind us that excellent teaching runs both deep and broad across Berkeley’s academic landscape.
The campus community is invited to celebrate these recipients at a public ceremony in the West Pauley Ballroom, MLK Student Center on Wednesday, April 23, 2025, 5:30 - 7:00 pm, followed by an open reception.
Associate Professor, Neuroscience
B.S., Penn State University
Ph.D., Rockefeller University
Reflective Teaching Statement
Teaching is something I have always highly valued and enjoyed. I look forward to the challenge and satisfaction of distilling complex topics into something relatable and understandable. I have been fortunate to have varied teaching opportunities at UC Berkeley, including leading graduate seminars (MCB 290), career skills courses (NEUROSCI 290A and B) and research ethics discussions (MCB 293C). However, my primary teaching efforts have been dedicated to two upper division undergraduate classes: MCB 160 and MCB 165. Most recently, I co-developed a new undergraduate class for the newly established Neuroscience major (NEU 164: Neurodevelopment) together with my colleague Dr. Marla Feller.
When I first started teaching MCB 160 (Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology), I took the initiative to develop new material for the course incorporating the latest research on synaptic plasticity, brain disorders, and cell type mapping. A key aspect of my lectures is to bring in examples from current research whenever possible. I find that the students really enjoy hearing about the latest research advances as it keeps them engaged with the material. Students can see how the topics they are learning about are important and applied “in the real world”. It is a privilege to be one of the first people to tell students the mysteries about how the brain works at a molecular level.
MCB 165 (Neurobiology of Disease) was also a newly redesigned course when I began teaching it with my co-instructors Stephan Lammel and Robin Ball. Together, we developed the course structure and curriculum, which has been very successful and well-received over the years. For MCB 165, I taught several introductory lectures on topics such as the drug discovery pipeline, neuropharmacology, and genetic and environmental risk factors. I go through some of the history of how mental disorders have been dealt with in the past and how modern science has (mostly) destigmatized these disorders. My goal is to establish an environment where these challenging diseases, which have affected many students personally, can be discussed openly and addressed from a biological standpoint. There is no textbook for MCB 165, rather the course content comes from primary research papers. In discussion section, the students work in small groups to read and decipher published research papers related to the lecture topics. By the end of the class, the students not only understand much more about how biomedical research is done but they can begin to critique it and come up with new research questions.
In the fall of 2024, I again had the opportunity to design a new course together with Dr. Feller. This was exciting as it was the first time that we had an entire course dedicated to neurodevelopment, which is a major research focus of my laboratory. Given the success of MCB 165, we modeled the structure after that class, emphasizing students’ learning and understanding of primary research. We encouraged students to consider how we go about addressing questions in neurobiology through experiments and how our findings are translated into “textbook” knowledge. We highlight that science is an ongoing discovery process and new findings continue to challenge the current dogma.
My office hours for each of these courses are always well attended and it’s a pleasure to interact with the students in a more informal setting. I find that students often ask “curiosity-driven” questions that are outside of the scope of what they need to know for the class or exam. This gives me confidence that the material has been presented clearly and it’s very rewarding to see that I’ve sparked their interest in the topic.
In terms of teaching strategy, my goal is to present the material in a clear, concise, and organized way, which I hope everyone can understand. I think it’s critical to not only deliver the content but to help students understand why it’s important and why they should spend the time to learn it. Luckily, I teach about the brain and about diseases of the brain, which are just inherently interesting (in my opinion!). It’s therefore an easy task to make the material relatable, accessible, and interesting to the students. The other aspects I try to bring to the classroom are empathy, kindness, and understanding. I genuinely care about the well-being of the students and I work hard to help them succeed. I understand that they invest their time and money in being at UC Berkeley and I want to make their experience as positive as possible. Related to this, I spend a significant amount of time outside the classroom serving as an informal mentor for students and writing letters of recommendation to support them in applying for graduate school, medical school, and other post-bac programs. I write letters for 30+ undergraduates a year, including those that I mentor in my research lab. It’s always very satisfying to get the “good news” emails and cards from former students who I provided letters of recommendation for, who are starting on new career paths in medical or graduate school.
In addition to teaching undergraduates in the classroom, I mentor a large number of undergraduates, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows in my laboratory. For these trainees, I provide technical and professional training, career advice, (sometimes life advice), and support in obtaining a career position. I am proud of the success of my trainees as they have earned fellowships, published first author papers, and moved on to high level positions after leaving the lab. I am also an active mentor and advisor for graduate students outside of my lab. In eleven years, I have served on 63 graduate qualifying exam committees and 44 thesis committees. I also participate in the MCB and Neuroscience Department post-doc mentoring programs and the Inclusive Faculty Mentorship Program.
Going forward, I will continue developing my teaching and mentorship skills and strive to promote the academic and professional development of students in my laboratory and classes.
Teaching Professor, Computer Science
B.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
M.S., UC Berkeley
Ph.D., UC Berkeley
Reflective Teaching Statement
My teaching goals have been to broaden participation in computing to underrepresented students, and to design courses and policies so that all students can achieve mastery. To that end, I co-developed an innovative non-majors course, and worked for over a decade to share it with over a thousand high school teachers through summer professional development. Having been inspired by “Grading for Equity” workshops, my eyes were opened to the deleterious effect on learning and equity that rigid grading policies can have. I shifted my research and development focus to equitable grading practices, including advocacy, tool development, and data analysis. I describe these experiences and results below.
When I joined the UC Berkeley faculty as a lecturer in 2000, I was assigned the non-major computing course CS3 – Introduction to Symbolic Programming. What a delight to share my love for computer science with people learning it for the first time! I sought to inspire students with enthusiastic and engaging lectures, empathetic office hours, fun projects, scaffolded labs, and well-prepared teaching staff. My objective was to create a learning environment where every student could succeed. Two things began to catch my attention, despite our efforts: a significant fraction of students received D-F grades, and the percentage of female student enrollment hovered around 30%.
I attended a “CS for All” summit in October 2008 that bemoaned the lack of diversity in the College Board Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science (CS) A high school course. The consensus was to create a new high school computer science course, AP CS Principles, which would also teach the global impact of computing. I rushed back to Berkeley and told my colleague Brian Harvey that we needed to create the best AP CS Principles-aligned course in the country. After a year of co-design with undergrads and grad students in which we preserved the best parts of CS3 but brought in many fresh ideas, CS3 transformed into CS10 – The Beauty and Joy of Computing.
We switched to a blocks-based language but preserved a functional-first programming paradigm, and powerful CS ideas like recursion and functions-as-data. We created interactive, graphical, engaging labs and projects, replacing dry text-in-text-out activities. We brought in research faculty who taught Human Computing Interaction, Artificial Intelligence, and Computational Science to give guest lecturers. We changed the final project to be open-ended, scoped appropriately through conversations with TAs. We introduced “social implications of computing” lectures and readings, and “computing in the news” before every lecture.
The percentage of women and students of color immediately jumped (women averaging around 45%), as did the engagement of all students. At some point, the percentage of women students enrolled eclipsed 50% – the first time at UC Berkeley for an introductory computing class. In later semesters, it even grew to 65% and 72%, among the highest in the nation! Like all lower-division classes in EECS, we mostly hire undergraduates for our teaching staff, and have been delighted that the ratio of women in our staff also tracked upward. We were moving the needle significantly, and students were “seeing themselves” in their student instructors, and in computing.
We were humbled by the success and national visibility of the course! BJC was chosen as a College Board National Pilot, and we received four National Science Foundation grants to provide summer professional development for teachers (and have since reached over a thousand teachers all over the world). BJC was featured in the New York Times, PBS NewsHour, NPR's All Things Considered, USA Today, and the front pages of the San Jose Mercury News and San Francisco Chronicle. I was asked to give a TedX talk on BJC, and even invited to the White House twice for CSforALL gatherings!
However, I still noticed that there were too many CS10 students receiving D-F grades. After attending a set of College of Engineering professional development workshops on “Grading for Equity” in 2020, I realized that despite changing almost everything from CS3, I had not changed the grading practices that were a potential source of inequity. What if a student couldn’t learn as fast as the instructor taught, or “life got in the way” during the semester? Could we allow some flexibility in the pace of learning for these students? Why couldn’t we strive for “A’s for All” – design policies without lowering standards that allowed all students to achieve mastery?
Using CS10 as a test bed, I introduced autograders for all programming projects, extensions upon request for project deadlines, multiple-chance open-book untimed exams, and even the possibility of working beyond the term to achieve mastery. Every semester, we would adjust our messaging and policies for student success.
For example, we learned that by-default two-week project extensions were too much, so we reduced them. We learned that attendance was key to engagement, so we introduced required attendance for all class activities, with opportunities to make up missed attendance through worksheet completion. We learned that students didn’t need five exam retakes, and fewer were just as effective. We also learned that these student-centric policies were almost universally appreciated, with testimonials wishing all classes cared for learning, mental health, and work-life balance as much as ours did.
I partnered with my colleague Armando Fox, and calling this initiative “A’s for All (as time and effort allow),” we secured over $1M in grants to develop tools, policies, and advocacy. We authored a well-received white paper and held workshops at the flagship CS Education conference to inspire other colleagues to join the movement. We have presented at several conferences, UC Berkeley workshops, and even to the UC Regents – their first reaction was “Where was this 30 years ago?!”.
Looking back, two simple phrases summarize my teaching career: “CS for All” and “A’s for All”. It has been the privilege of a lifetime to teach at my alma mater, where my teaching, research, development, and service have intersected to broaden participation in computing to students traditionally underrepresented, and to support all students in achieving mastery.
Associate Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
B.S., Indian Institute of Technology Madras
M.S., UC Berkeley
Ph.D., UC Berkeley
Reflective Teaching Statement
Teaching as a responsibility and inspiration: A personal journey
I remember walking into a classroom filled with 150 sophomore students during my first year of teaching at UC Berkeley in 2017. I still recall the mix of emotions—excitement, anticipation, and a deep sense of responsibility. These students were waiting to hear my lectures on transport phenomena (CBE 150A). Even though I may have meticulously planned my course and rehearsed my first lecture, my sense of responsibility overshadowed everything else. I feel responsible for my young colleagues’ learning, which will one day be put into practice for the betterment of society. It is this basic sense of responsibility that has continued to drive me and define my goals and objectives in every course I teach.
Inculcating a welcoming learning environment: While I base my teaching philosophy on certain core principles as I shall discuss, they have also evolved with experiences over the years. My journey at Berkeley started with CBE 150A: the first significant technical course that chemical engineers are introduced to in the curriculum. I was informed that it is also the “gatekeeper” course. Students must achieve a C- or above to pass and move ahead with the program. Historically, 15-20% of students do not move forward—a discouraging statistic. I personally dislike the concept of “gatekeeping” in education: education should be empowering, and not an impediment. Every student who gives their best should have a fair chance to succeed. In my first offering of this course, I faced challenges with improving student performance. To address this issue, I implemented several strategies. The GSIs and I made ourselves more available to students for questions by increasing the number of contact hours, as our regular office hours were crowded. We made it a priority to discuss with students with low scores on an early midterm exam to understand their difficulties. I realized that providing clear expectations of what I wanted them to learn was crucial for improving their performance. As I taught the course again, I posed practice questions modeling prior examinations—which kept the surprise factor but also allowed students to grasp the essential ingredients necessary for success. This timely feedback, along with frequent check-ins with the help of GSIs, helped improve student performance. I have also been an early adopter of rubric-based grading since 2017, which, in my opinion, reduces bias and maintains consistency in grading. In my latest offering of the course in the spring of 2020, my efforts collectively resulted in an improved GPA and an increase in the number of passing students to 96% (87 out of 90), all while maintaining the course’s rigor.
The pleasure of learning: I come from a family of teachers. My grandparents were teachers and ran a home school in their village. My mother was also a teacher and was considered one of the best among her town, and those nearby. I remember vividly the respect that she commanded, and the love that she received from students. My inspiration for pursuing education came from my mother, who was a regional language (Telugu) master. However, when I was in 8th grade, she was asked to teach mathematics for 7th graders due to a shortage of instructors. Although she knew the foundations of the subject, she was by no means comfortable teaching it. She took up the challenge, declaring that her son knew the subject and that she would indeed learn it from him and subsequently teach it. The amount of dedication and discipline she showed in learning a new subject from me, all while writing lectures to distill the concepts pedagogically, was simply astounding and a lesson in teaching. At the same time, I felt a special pleasure in explaining the concepts to her, especially when I realized that she understood them and was also enjoying the learning process. Our back-and-forth continued for nearly a year, during which her dedication to teaching and the joy I found in explaining became an even bigger inspiration for me to consider teaching as a profession. To this day, I consider my course to be successful not when the students perform well in exams and quizzes, but when I realize that the students enjoyed the process of learning. I ask myself this question every time I step out of the lecture hall—was I able to inspire the students to learn, and did they find the joy in learning? It is my belief that teaching, in essence, is a two-way process—the inspiration to be a teacher comes from the enthusiasm and curiosity of students, and the inspiration to learn comes from the enthusiasm of the teacher.
Bridging gaps and understanding student struggles: As I continued as an assistant professor, I decided to take up another core course, CBE 140: an introductory course to chemical engineering. This course proved to be especially challenging to teach as I am not a chemical engineer by training. Thus, I myself was at a loss to formulate fundamental questions, and I wondered: How could I motivate students who were just embarking on their engineering journey? There was also the bigger question of how one would pedagogically arrange the material covering chemical reactions, thermodynamics, and phase transitions all in one course. Preparing lectures and the sequence of concepts increased my empathy for the students facing difficulties within this discipline, as I experienced their struggles firsthand. As a consequence, I rediscovered my own passion and sense of responsibility in motivating students to be inspired by chemical engineering. The feeling was exceedingly similar to my mother’s experience of teaching the mathematics class. As I learned the material from textbooks and my colleagues’ lecture notes, I started to rediscover the joy of understanding and learning a new subject. I decided to write my lectures in a way that would channel this feeling, and motivate my students to participate in the discovery of new ideas. I felt I could do so by improving active class participation through interactive problem-solving sessions and in-class peer discussions. By implementing these concepts, I saw a gradual increase in the number of questions being posed, and I was excited that students were interested in the material. My continued reflection and iteration throughout the semester proved successful when I completed my first offering of the course in the spring of 2021: I received the highest ratings for this introductory course in the last decade. In addition, I found it particularly rewarding when newer colleagues used my lecture notes to teach this course subsequently.
Driving undergraduate education: Inspired by experiences from undergraduate teaching, my sense of responsibility made me choose to dedicate my services to improving undergraduate education. After earning tenure, I took up the position of co-director of undergraduate education (2022—present) in my department. My teaching experiences have informed, proposed and implemented changes as co-director. For example, during my time teaching the first technical course (CBE 150A) from 2016 to 2020, it became increasingly clear that students were inadequately prepared for the requisite mathematics, including differential equations, statistics, and related computational aspects. To address this, I led various discussions in the department, which were instrumental in the formation of a committee dedicated to designing a new mathematics course aimed at preparing students. These efforts finally led to a new course, CBE 130 (Mathematical Methods for Chemical Engineering), that was initially offered in 2022 to early sophomores and has now finished its third offering. In addition, I continued to drive the modernization of the undergraduate curriculum, specifically regarding the computational preparedness of CBE students. As a result of these efforts, CS61A (an introduction to programming) is now offered as a viable alternative to E7 (Introduction to programming for scientists and engineers). As a theorist, I realized with my colleagues that there is currently a shortage of theory-oriented students in the discipline of chemical engineering, which was originally known for theoretical advances. While searching for answers, we realized that the discipline was focused heavily on experimental work, and undergraduates were rarely informed that theory and computation are viable options. I recently spearheaded discussions regarding offering a theory concentration in chemical engineering to enhance future research in this area. In the co-director role, I have also collaborated with the undergraduate advising office to identify and resolve academic challenges. The most rewarding moment came during our recent ABET review, where, after an extensive evaluation, an external committee declared “No deficiencies!”—a testament to the strong support system we have built for our students.
Mentorship and a source of fulfillment: Lastly, teaching extends beyond classroom instruction and involves mentorship, guidance and fostering professional growth. Perhaps one of the most fulfilling aspects of my role as an educator is mentoring students who are not in my own research group, whether they are graduate or undergraduate students. I have been an unofficial advisor to Dr. Kara Fong, whom I met in my advanced graduate transport phenomena course (CBE 256), and who is now joining as an assistant professor at Caltech. I have also provided guidance to undergraduate student Suchitra Narayan, helping her make a unique leap into astrochemistry, and to another graduate student Helen Bergstrom, who is now thriving in the startup ecosystem as we transition to an electric future among others. To summarize my statement, as I learned from my experiences and from a great teacher, my mother, teaching is a lifelong commitment and responsibility that involves inspiring and shaping future generations.
Professor, Scandinavian and Film and Media
B.A., Brigham Young University
M.A., UC Berkeley
Ph.D., UC Berkeley
Reflective Teaching Statement
I scan the classroom looking for the glimmer, the tilt of the head, the puzzled look, the smile. Despite the packed classroom of fifty students, I still want a connection with the students and their learning process. If it is true that teaching is mainly about setting the cognitive bait that will set the individual discovery process in motion, my stake in it is to see what’s going on inside them. But I can’t always tell; the composed faces of these first-year students, some of whom have learned quickly at Berkeley to take refuge in anonymity, don’t tell the whole story. For that reason, in the Scandinavian 75 class (“Nordic Culture and Values”) that I designed and have taught for the last seven fall semesters, I have consistently passed out index cards for each lecture with these prompts: “What surprised you? What are you curious to know more about? What can I do differently to facilitate your learning?” For the final five minutes of class, I ask the students to gather their thoughts and reflect to me on the cards what stood out to them in the day’s materials. As I pore over them after class, I think to myself: “So that’s what was going on in the head of that shy student!” Or: “I guess that concept didn’t really land the way I thought it would.” Or: “That’s a really smart, original take! — I’ll post that to the bCourses Page for the others.” In this routine little exercise, I am consistently struck by the richness in student thinking that is barely visible from the lectern. This feedback channel has become what I prize most about teaching that class because it gives me ongoing access to a personal conversation with each student that feels different from what I might get by skimming assigned discussion posts on bCourses. It also signals two things to the students: I want them to be curious and analytical in their thinking and leave the class with transformed ways of seeing the world.
Over the past five years (ever since the Spring 2020 semester) I have put most of my professional energy into thinking about pedagogy. Forced to improvise by the pandemic’s state of emergency, I took the opportunity in my Film & Media and Scandinavian classes to rethink the habits of my previous thirty years of teaching and to engage with new, multimodal approaches. Through it all, I wanted to mitigate the awful educational dilemma we found ourselves in when everything was forced onto Zoom within a matter of days. I learned how to design bCourses pages with universal design and access in mind, how to record lectures, how to create visually rich materials, how to broadcast film clips, and to fight, fight, fight against Zoom burnout. As Department Chair in the first pandemic semester and Faculty Adviser for GSI Affairs and Graduate Adviser for rest of it, I also sensed that some faculty and GSIs in my departments were flailing in the situation. So, I convened a voluntary series of pedagogy check-ins (over Zoom, of course!) where colleagues and peers could share tips about the challenges of teaching moving-image materials online and do some collective problem-solving and comparison across courses. This was the first time that many of us colleagues had had this kind of intentional pedagogical discussion (so often these matters are taken for granted or are otherwise habitual at the university). The pandemic flushed some great discussions and teaching awareness out into the open.
I also designed two new courses during this stretch that were “pedagogy forward.” The first, a course in the Art of Writing program called “Advanced Film Writing,” took on the goal of teaching students to write in small genres they had not yet tried but which were relevant to professional writing in film and media fields. We practiced the film review, the television review, the film-archive or festival program note, and the grant proposal, switching gears with each mini-genre to assess what made good versions of each. Because this class was the size of a workshop seminar, we could polish their drafts with great attention. I describe this class as “pedagogy forward” not only because of the attention we could devote to each mode of writing, but also because the Art of Writing program was designed as a mentored co-teaching opportunity as well. I was paired with an experienced Film & Media GSI and we co-designed and co-taught all aspects of the course together, genuinely learning from each other throughout. It was the best co-teaching experience I have had at Berkeley.
My second new course design during this time was for a Film 375 graduate pedagogy class for new teachers of R&C. Because our versions of those classes incorporate visual materials (RVC, “Reading, Viewing, and Composition,” was our in-joke renaming of the course), students across many departments who were interested teaching visual materials as writing prompts joined the seminar, which I taught twice. I loved the collaborative workshop mode of teaching/taking this class while in the thick of teaching other classes because it created a space for meta-reflection, experimentation, and sharing of best practices. Since this course was launched and taught in turbulent times (BLM, the GSI strike), our attention turned necessarily to issues of equity, anti-racism, and access in the teaching of writing, issues that changed how I thought about teaching in all my courses.
I single out the recent five-year period’s teaching experiences from the rest of my thirty-one years teaching at UC Berkeley because the pandemic’s state of exception forced so much intentionality and innovation out into the open. As new political and technological challenges once again appear ready to upend university teaching in the near future, the goals of fostering a curious and critical inner life in students seems more important to me than ever. We need to keep scanning the room.
Associate Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology
B.S., Trinity University
Ph.D., UC San Francisco
Reflective Teaching Statement
Embedding my passion for advancing equity - both in academia and in global health - into teaching strengthens my connections with students and enhances its impact. I was taught that science is inherently rational, self-evident and impersonal. Although there is truth in this, I believe this mentality too often leads to a teaching style that consists of simply presenting information for students to grasp. This places the onus for learning entirely on students to 'figure it out,' privileging those who already possess the background knowledge, academic confidence, or support systems to succeed, and exacerbating inequities in the classroom. Furthermore, it can lead to teachers to undervalue the importance of clear, engaging, and accessible communication, which I believe is essential for fostering understanding in an inclusive classroom. My goal as a teacher at Cal is to empower students both by creating inclusive learning environments and by connecting the study of biology to my personal values and goals in the arena of global health equity.
Students at Cal come from an astonishing variety of backgrounds and experiences. Further, my classes often include students with different goals—from MCB majors aiming for PhDs in immunology to dedicated pre-meds to the many students who are unsure of their career aspirations. I approach teaching with the fundamental belief that every student in the class can master the material, and there are two things I need to do to reach them: First, I engage ALL of these diverse students in an active learning process that prioritizes critical thinking over memorizing. To achieve this, I break down complex concepts in class and connect them to overarching themes within the immune response. By asking and answering questions and by reading the facial expressions and body language of students I know whether I have successfully communicated the logic of the topic at hand. If students struggle with a concept, I reframe and explain it until the message lands. By iteratively engaging and re-engaging students I reach as many of the diverse perspectives and learning styles as possible. Second, I believe that by being my authentic self and allowing students to see me as a real, approachable human being, I create a more welcoming and inclusive environment. This authenticity helps students feel more comfortable, fostering a sense of belonging and confidence in their ability to succeed.
Although many students at Cal study biology because they want to use this knowledge to help those in need, they often remain uncertain about how to achieve this goal. This uncertainty arises, in part, because while MCB provides a rigorous foundation in biology, students graduate with limited understanding of how modern advances in biology are translated into new treatments. To address this gap, my faculty colleague Andy Dillin and I developed the first undergraduate MCB course focused on the science of disease and its associated therapies. The goal of this course is to allow students to understand how modern medicines work, how they are developed, and how they can participate in this process in their future career choices. This course requires me to stay at the cutting edge of the literature so that I can engage students with the most up to date information. This class also allows me to incorporate my passion for health equity into the biological sciences, as questions of equity are inherent to drug development—what diseases are prioritized, how clinical trials are designed, and who has access to medicines.
Graduate student training is a very important part of my educational mission at UC Berkeley. To teach graduate students how to be effective scientists, I interact with each of my PhD students for several hours a week both individually and in groups. I teach them to read the literature, to formulate sound scientific hypotheses, to perform experiments, interpret data, and present and disseminate results. To do this successfully for every student, I have been inspired by Beronda Montgomery’s description of mentoring as gardening. Just as all plants can thrive if given the right environment, I believe that all students can thrive with the right support. This means that I provide tailored support and guidance to each student that considers their unique strengths and areas for growth.
My interest in global health, equity in science, teaching and research are most effectively united in my work directing the Alliance for Global Health and Science, an organization dedicated to strengthening scientific capacity in East Africa. My research focuses on Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a major cause of mortality in much of Africa. After years of work in this field, I realized that global health equity can only be achieved if local populations can perform research on diseases that most affect them. Thus, the Alliance hosts an annual “Summer Research Institute” at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, a series of individual workshops that train African students in techniques in immunology and molecular biology. UC Berkeley graduate students, both MPH and PhD, are the backbone of the Alliance’s teaching and training in Africa. I teach these Berkeley students that their goals as instructors are as much about learning as teaching. Firstly, they gain insights into the health challenges facing East Africa that are grounded in the real needs of affected communities, which helps inform their own research. They develop a deeper understanding of the social, political, and economic barriers to conducting research in resource-limited settings. They observe the remarkable ingenuity of African researchers who excel at innovating with limited resources. Finally, they build essential skills in teaching and collaborating across cultural contexts, enriching their professional and academic growth.
I am continually learning how to dissolve boundaries between teaching, research and my personal values and goals as a faculty member, as well as barriers that hinder students from fully engaging in their learning within the classroom. I am also mindful that students’ needs and interests evolve over time, which requires me to adapt and refine my approach accordingly. This ongoing work is a privilege that brings profound meaning to my career, far beyond what research alone could provide.