Biology Education Group Seminar

Title: Discovery-based lab courses and teacher assistant training

Group Meeting Date & Time: Friday, November 9, 2012 @ 2:00 pm

Location: Koch Institute, 76-359 (large conference room on 3rd floor)

Dr. Mary Ellen Wiltrout completed her thesis in Dr. Graham Walker’s lab at MIT studying translesion synthesis. She appreciated her teaching experience at MIT with Drs. Steve Bell and Tania Baker in MIT Course 7.28 Molecular Biology and learned a lot from Dr. Michelle Mischke while teaching MIT Course 7.012 Introductory Biology. During that time, she expanded her interest in teaching as a seminar XL course facilitator, mentoring a student for two summers through the Undergraduate Summer Research Institute, attending educational seminars hosted by Professor Graham Walker, and taking a scientific teaching course. In the fall of 2009, she began working as the preceptor for MCB 52, the Molecular Biology course at Harvard University with Dr. Rich Losick, Dr. Briana Burton, and Dr. Tom Torello. As a preceptor, Mary Ellen manages a staff of teaching fellows, oversees the execution of a discovery-based lab for the students, and gives lectures for the course. She also teaches several of her own courses at Harvard’s Extension School including a DNA repair and mutagenesis proseminar that focuses on reading the primary literature and writing. In 2011, she completed the HHMI Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education in Biology and served as a facilitator in 2012.