In teaching, my primary goal is to excite students about the material and motivate them to learnmore about it. Stories of scientific history in the making, such as Liz Gould’s overthrow of neuroscientific dogma when she demonstrated that adults form new neurons, help to personalizethe science for them. I also structure my courses so that my lectures are just the starting point for students to think about the material. I want my students to be active participants rather than justpassive consumers of my lectures. I work on fostering student involvement in a diverse set of courses, including a large introductory statistics course, a mid-sized lecture course (“Aging andthe Human Brain”), a senior seminar (“Memory Distortion”), and graduate seminars (such as a proseminar on memory and seminars on emotion and cognition and other special topics).

In my undergraduate and graduate seminars, I encourage active participation in coursediscussions by assigning each student a couple of dates to email me discussion questions about the readings before we meet. They come up with thought-provoking questions, such as “Imagineyou could take a pill to enhance specific parts of your memory. Would you take that? If so, which aspect of memory would you choose to enhance?” or “When considering how repetition ofquestions can lead to false confessions, might repetition cause desensitization of the importance of a memory or loss of minor details?” The night before each seminar meeting, I organize the setof questions I have received, allowing me to integrate students in the discussion and cue them to discuss their question/comments. This method helps me bring quieter students into the discussionwhen they are prepared to talk. It also encourages the students to engage with the readings more deeply.

In my lecture course on aging and the brain that I recently taught for the first time, I integrated10-15 minute discussion sections into the lecture period, by assigning students to groups of about 10 students each. Doing this with the fixed lecture hall seating was a bit challenging, but onegroup met in the front of the room, one in the back, one outdoors under a balcony and two in the hallway. During the hour and 45 minute class time, I would typically lecture for about 45minutes, then hand out discussion questions for the groups to work through before reconvening the lecture. Although the teaching assistant and I would walk around and listen in, the studentsran the discussions themselves. In addition, I had invited members of the UC Santa Cruz Lifelong Learners to audit the course, and so these group discussions gave the undergraduates andthe older adults a chance to interact. Students were quite enthusiastic about this format and I believe it was effective because it provided variety during the class session and because thediscussions were clearly structured and closely related to the lecture topic they had just heard or the readings they had done.

Even in my large introductory psychological statistics course (of over 100 students), I try to fosterstudent involvement as part of both lectures and sections. During my lecture, I give brief “selftest” problems or questions for students to discuss with those around them before explaining thesolution in the lecture. During the section meetings, the teaching assistant briefly reviews the course material, and then the students break up into assigned groups of three and tackle a problemset. This problem set consists of three problems, and each student is primarily responsible for one of the problems. After working on problems independently, the group goes over the worktogether to make sure it is correct. They turn in the three problem solutions together as a group and get the same grade. Thus, students help each other out and get to test their own abilities in alow-pressure situation.

As a memory researcher, I know that the rote memorization that happens in many classes isunlikely to lead to long-term results. I try to avoid situations that encourage cramming (a guarantee that everything will be quickly forgotten), instead structuring courses so that studentsspend time outside of class working with the material throughout the quarter. Likewise, in courses with a required review paper, I have students first turn in a proposed topic, followed byan initial bibliography for the paper, and then a draft of the paper that gets reviewed by peers in the course before they turn in the final version.

I enjoy being a research mentor for both undergraduates and graduate students. In the past sixyears, I have had over 55 undergraduates work in my lab as part of our research team. When students are interested, I help them continue their participation in the field. I helped somestudents find full-time research assistant jobs in labs around the country to help prepare them for graduate school and have also written letters for many students applying directly for graduateschool. One senior thesis I supervised won a Dean’s Award and another one resulted in a coauthored publication in a high-profile journal. When mentoring graduate students, I encouragethem to take the lead on projects but give them the support they need to be able to eventually publish their findings.

For me, teaching is the best way to deeply learn and understand a topic. Trying to explainsomething solidifies my knowledge of things I understand well and makes it obvious to me when I need to go back and do more learning. As much as possible, I want to give students thisexperience of trying to convey the information they have learned to others, both so that they can feel a sense of ownership of the course material and so that they can get a sense of what they doand do not understand well.