StemCell Therapy

College was always important to my parents. Neither of them went to college and it was always clear growing up that the expectation was that we were going to go to college. But during high school, I didnt have any idea what I was going to go to college for and what my passion was for, until that AP Biology class.

What made you decide on research and teaching, as opposed to medical school or the many other careers a biology student can pursue?Its a roundabout story, but essentially I thought I wanted to go to medical school. I wanted to be a pediatrician, and that was to be my focus. But then I had a research experience as an undergraduate that really opened my eyes to what experimentation is, how to think about big questions, and how to figure out what experiments will help get you closer to the answers to those questions.

Then, after finishing my undergrad, I started teaching high school biology and I realized how much I loved to teach. I taught at a Catholic school with a very small minority population. I didnt realize going into it how much my presence would mean to those students.

How did teaching in that high school shape how you teach now?Well, soon after I started there I had a lot of the underrepresented minority students in my classroom after school and during lunch. Just wanting to talk about their experiences in life. For many of them, I was their first Black teacher that theyve ever had, and I taught 10th graders. That experience really opened my eyes to what Ias a Black woman in science and as an educatorrepresent. That was the moment where I started thinking that I really love science and I wanted to do experimentation, but I also wanted to focus on mentorship. I wanted to be a mentor, I wanted to increase underrepresented minority participation in science, and get those students loving science. And that was the spark that started that. I then worked for a couple of years for a NASA-funded program, where that was actually their focusto increase the underrepresented groups participation in science.

I realized that I wanted to teach and conduct research at a primarily undergraduate institution. So I went into grad school with that goal in mind. I was a non-traditional student, going back several years after completing my bachelors degree. I received grants through my graduate school department and the US Department of Education. I participated in a postdoctoral fellowship thats specific for teaching scientists to be better educators. When I finished my PhD, I went into that fellowship program. And now Im excited to be here at PLU, focussed on these three core elements of teaching, increasing representation in my field, and conducting research.

Continue reading here:
PLUs Lathiena Nervo discusses her work and being named one of the 1,000 inspiring Black scientists in America - Pacific Lutheran University

This entry was posted on February 7, 2021 at 3:52 am and is filed under Molecular Genetics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |