The VBS Department would like to recognize the Teaching Assistants (TA's) who have demonstrated exemplary efforts in providing teaching support to VBS Teaching Faculty during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Lexi Frank has been a stellar addition to our anatomy teaching team this past spring (2023). She began learning the ways of our large animal anatomy specimen preparation, as she observed and assisted with our pony deliveries and embalming process. She came prepared for the intensive content covered each week, attended our weekly instructor reviews, and TA’d at least one lab per week. She helped students understand the dissection tasks and find key structures. Lexi also assisted with dissecting specimens in preparation for class on a regular basis, and then completed her own dissection of the equine pelvis and presented it in lab so students could get a guided tour of difficult structures. Students specifically noted how helpful her dissection and demonstration were to their learning. Anatomy is a difficult subject to step into, but Lexi was excited and determined to learn the material and help students and instructors. She volunteered to help with many different tasks, and her personality made it easy for instructors and students to feel comfortable. She completed this TA alongside finishing up PhD coursework and completing research in her PI’s lab. She has all the qualities of an excellent educator."
"Lexi was an extremely valuable part of the Anatomy II instructional team this semester. She mastered the content and did a great job of assisting students with their dissections during lab, including leading "tours" of difficult structures. Lexi also assisted with the preparation of teaching specimens - from helping with animal intake and euthanasia to prosecting (dissecting in advance) cadavers so students had demo specimens to learn from. She volunteered to take on difficult tasks and always had a positive and enthusiastic attitude.
Jonah Cullen has been the TA for CMB/VMED 5915, Essential Statistics for Life Sciences, for the last three years.
He has been truly outstanding at helping students learn the material, providing individual and group tutoring in office hours and one-on-one appointments, and especially by providing constructive feedback in his grading of the homework assignments. In addition to excelling at these usual responsibilities, he has gone above and beyond to improve the course, by organizing and administering a Slack group for the class, and by building a system to automatically run student homework submissions, so the course can model best practices for reproducibility for all assignments.
Jonah Cullen has been the TA for CMB/VMED 5915, Essential Statistics for Life Sciences, for the last three years. He has been truly outstanding at helping students learn the material, providing individual and group tutoring in office hours and one-on-one appointments, and especially by providing constructive feedback in his grading of the homework assignments. In addition to excelling at these usual responsibilities, he has gone above and beyond to improve the course, by organizing and administering a Slack group for the class, and by building a system to automatically run student homework submissions, so the course can model best practices for reproducibility for all assignments.
Congratulations Lexi and Jonah!
