I suppose that I ought to admit at the start that biology is great fun and my teaching could probably be described as an elaborate attempt to convince students that it is so.  But this wouldn’t be considered a proper philosophy of instruction by some, and there are some more serious issues on which I focus in my classes.

  My primary goal as an instructor is to help students learn to think critically.  Thinking critically means learning to distinguish important questions from less important ones, to evaluate arguments and evidence on either side of a controversy, to decide if further information is needed to distinguish competing arguments, and to be able to obtain that information.  Biology is the medium through which I teach these skills to students.  I keep to this goal because the ability to think critically will endure long after a student will have forgotten the nuances of the biological material we covered together in class.  If my students learn to think critically, then, in future, they can teach themselves almost anything (with guidance, of course) and have the fundamental tool to succeed in any career they choose.    

   I admit to two additional goals as a teacher.  First, I want my students to learn the facts in our biological subjects; this is the goal most students expect that I will have for them.  The surprise for the students is that this goal is really subsidiary - the biological facts are there because biologists learned to think critically about living systems.  And it turns out that some of the "facts" tend to change every few years as critical thinkers discover new processes.  Second, I want my students to develop the ability to write expository material well.  The ability to write well will serve students in any profession upon which they embark.  In learning to write well, a student learns to distinguish what is important from what is not, to organize his or her ideas, and, finally, to use clear language and pleasing style.  It's not too hard to see how teaching students to write well is just an additional tool for teaching them to think critically. 

   These goals are reflected in how I teach my formal classes; a glimpse of that reflection can be seen in the syllabi and examinations that I have used in recent classes (these are accessible through my home page: http://bio.fsu.edu/~jtravis/). 

  The syllabi reflect the premium that I place on organization; the examinations, which are always essay examinations, reveal the premium I place on the students' being able to think and to solve problems and not simply regurgitate a mass of details that they have memorized.  I hope both syllabi and examinations also offer a glimpse of how much fun I think teaching and learning are. 

Classes Offered Regularly

   In my rotation through the undergraduate curriculum I have taught two courses on a regular basis (although I have taught only graduate courses the last two years).  One course, PCB 4673, Evolution, is a required course for majors in biological science.  Because it is a required course, enrollment is usually large (~70+ students).  This is a lecture course in which we survey evolutionary biology, examining the history of evolutionary thought, comparative development, population genetics, evolutionary patterns from morphology to molecules, and patterns in the fossil record.  We look at examples drawn as widely as possible, looking at everything from microbial evolution since the onset of antibiotic therapy to the convergent evolution of freeze-resistance systems in fish.             

Directed Independent Study

   I have supervised many DIS students over the years.  In general, I accept these students after I have taught them in one or other of my regular undergraduate classes so both the student and I can be sure that we are well-matched in interests and disposition.  The student and I meet weekly to discuss assigned reading from scientific journals and work to develop the research project; once the idea is developed and the project has begun, we meet only as needed (which can still be weekly) to make sure all is going well.  The student writes a paper at the end of the semester; this paper is in the form of a paper in a scientific journal.  Indeed, some of the DIS projects in the laboratory have been good enough to end as publications in refereed journals.  While it's always a challenge to help a student develop an idea into a do-able project in 1-2 semesters, this opportunity is undergraduate education at its finest for both student and mentor.