Norman Lab Outreach
Educational Outreach.
In line with the overall mission of the USC, my laboratory strives to
accomplish three main educational outreach goals:
1. Provide students with the highest-quality education
necessary for success and responsible citizenship in a complex and changing
world.
2. Enhance education by promoting highly integrated research and scholarship
3. Provide service and support to the community, state, nation, and the
world.
Teaching.
Teaching is a collaboration between teacher and student and my overall
approach to teaching in the class and in the laboratory can best described
as active adaptation where student strengths are bolstered and weaknesses
are addressed, corrected and minimized. Overall, through a combination of
classroom, laboratory, and in-the-field settings, all students should be
able to understand and apply the scientific method.
Courses
Offered:
Environmental Pollution and Health (ENHS221)
Ecology of Infectious Disease (ENHS793A)
Environmental Genomics (ENHS793B)
Applied Research in Environmental Health Sciences (ENHS765)
Graduate student and postdoctoral associate mentoring.
The role of an educator transcends the traditional classroom and extends
into the laboratory through the training of future scientists. My approach
to training graduate students in the laboratory is to provide strong
guidance while they initially learn complex techniques to ensure a deep
understanding of each step. Once confident, they become independent and
incorporate their own ideas into laboratory practice. To enhance knowledge,
senior graduate students teach techniques to new and visiting students while
I give input when necessary. My approach to training postdoctoral associates
is different than that of training graduate students. As a postdoc is
capable of doing laboratory science, attention is focused on preparation for
a future professional career. To achieve this, while maintaining a strong
research component, postdocs also mentor graduate students working on
similar projects. Together, with my oversight, they formulate ideas and
questions that drive the research project. I routinely meet independently
with the postdoc and graduate student to assess the mentoring progress. This
approach enhances both the education and experience of graduate students and
postdocs.
Community Outreach.
The Norman laboratory, through NSF funding, has instituted a lab and
lecture-based ‘Young Genomic Scientists’
program to educate high school students and science teachers about
state-of-the-art genomic-based tools for understanding microbial processes
occurring in nature.
