0:00  
Jim: Welcome back to the Plantopia podcast. Plantopia is the plant health podcast of the American Phytopathological Society and I'm your host Jim Bradeen. I'm a professor of plant pathology and associate vice president at Colorado State University. This episode of Plantopia is being recorded in front of a live audience as part of Plant Health 2022 In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Today we're going to hear from Dr. Leonor Leandro. Leonor is a professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and microbiology at the Iowa State University, and she earned her BS degree in agricultural science at the University of Lisbon in Portugal. She also holds an MS degree in Environmental Science from the University of Nottingham in the UK and a PhD in plant pathology from Iowa State University. After a postdoc position at North Carolina State, Leonora joined Iowa State as an assistant professor in 2006. And she was promoted to associate professor in 2012 and then to professor in 2020. Now Leonor has a very active and very well respected research program that focuses on soybean health and the ecology and epidemiology of soil borne fungal pathogens. And she has a very robust publication history in peer reviewed journals. But we're not going to talk about that today. We're not going to talk about her research impacts at all said we're gonna focus in this episode on her passion for teaching, Leonora has adopted and perfected a pedagogical approach known as team based learning and she uses this approach to motivate students in her principles of psychology classes, and she also teaches scientific presentation and an ethics course called responsible conduct of research. And recently along with colleague Mark Gleason, Leonor taught her very first APS course. This was a semester-long course on research ethics in recognition of her many contributions in plant pathology teaching. During this meeting, the Plant Health 2022 meeting, Leonor received the APS Excellence in Teaching Award. Today we're gonna talk about her passion for teaching her approach to the classroom and her insights in plant pathology education. Leonor, thank you so much. Welcome to Plantopia.

2:18  
Leonor: Thank you, Jim. It's a real pleasure to be here.

2:21  
Jim: It's wonderful to have you and congratulations on that teaching award. 

2:24  
Leonor: Thank you. 

2:25  
Jim: So I'm really excited to talk about teaching. We've already had a few brief conversations that I definitely want to learn more about your approach, but listeners to Plantopia, know that I'm always very interested in the origin story of our guests, we individually get into the field of plant pathology. And before we started recording today, you told me I wrote this down because of something that I really wanted to quote, you said, quote, I had a crush on mushrooms as a little girl. Yes. Tell us more about that. And how that interest came to be.

2:55  
Leonor: takes me back to the very beginning of my interest in fungi. So I think it was about third grade or fourth grade. And we had to pick a science topic to write a little report. And I came across a book on mushrooms. And I thought this will be interesting. So I still to this day have this handwritten little booklets that describe the life cycles of fungi. And I have and drawn of cycles of the mushrooms. And so I just became fascinated. I actually have as I go, my seats in there also and conjugation and things like that third grader would even get into but that really stuck with me. I just became fascinated with fungi. And so that kind of stuck with me throughout my training and then into my career. That's the glue that connects all my degrees and my interests and researches fungi.

3:37  
Jim: So you could have gone a very different way, though, with an interest in mycology, how did you get into plant pathology in particular?

3:45  
Leonor: That's an interesting question. You know, in high school, I knew I wanted to be a scientist from early on. I just thought research was really cool. And so when I was about to pick my degree, my college degree, I was really undecided because I thought, okay, I liked biology. I like botany. I liked microbes. And I was trying to find I had a foot in agriculture just because my mom had a little farm. And so we grew plants, and we grew some of our own food. And I just thought it was all very kind of romantic, the agricultural world. And so as I came across the degree and while we call him Portugal, agronomy, but it's really agricultural science, because it's all different types of crops and horticultural crops and an animal production even. So I thought this was perfect because it combines all my interests, you know, I didn't have to select right away too narrow. I got into this agricultural science because it it combined all these fields I was interested in. And then one of the kinds of tracks that you could have within that degree. One of them was plant protection. And so of course, that involves fungi and plant diseases. And of course, also, entomology and weed science was a no brainer for me to just go through that direction. And then yeah, I had multiple courses in plant pathology and and pesticide science and all these other related fields. So that's how I got into it. And then as I was getting ready to graduate actually, I should have mentioned that in Portugal, those degrees to undergraduate degrees are actually five year programs. And so in the last year, we have a research projects, independent research project, we write up a thesis, I have 100-page thesis from my undergraduate degree and you have to defend in front of a panel of professors. And so I love that experience that nine months research experience with this fungal pathogen grapevine. And I thought this is it, this is what I wanted to address in my life is work on fungal pathogens or plants.

5:23  
Jim: That's really wonderful. I can just hear that passion in your voice, which is something that's almost contagious. And I bet that translates really well into teaching. That's where I want to go next. And when did you first get into teaching? And what do you love about it?

5:41  
Leonor: Yeah. So discovering that I left teaching happened a lot later, actually, it was not something on my radar on my ambitions early on, and I was really I'm going to be in the lab, I'm going to be doing research. And my master's also, I mostly focused on research. And then it was when I started my PhD, that I have my first experiences at Iowa State had to do two semesters of teaching. And so I was a TA for an pathology anthropology course, I started enjoying that interaction with the students and just guiding them through the microscopy techniques or in explaining these basic concepts. And I offered a couple of lectures, my teacher at the time instructor said, Would you like to teach a lecture and I thought this would be a good experience. So I started enjoying it. But I was quite shy, I wasn't very much. I didn't really like to speak in public. So it wasn't something again, that I was looking for a job in teaching. But as the position I'm currently in the position in at Iowa State, it had 20% teaching, and the rest was research on fungal pathogens and teaching mycology. So when I saw the ad, I thought this would be great. I love to teach about fungi, most because of the topic. And as I started teaching, I just my passion grew and grew, you know, I had no formal training and teaching when I started in 2006. But it just kept growing. Every time I did it, the more I did it, the more I loved it. And I can't imagine, you know, not teaching, I just started teaching a lot more. And maybe I could just mention, I didn't have any formal teaching. But when we started those orientation, when I started my position, they had these, our Center for Excellence in learning and teaching. I was offering an orientation and training and teaching was like maybe three days. And so there are different opportunities to hear teachers and explaining what methods they used and, and what worked for them. And kind of the key skills of like how to face a classroom and how to interact with students. And it was in one of those sessions that TBL came across this team based learning and I listened to this professor at the time, Holly Bender, and she was just so passionate. And she said something that always mark continues to mark my teaching. She said, brains like to think and that was really mind blowing for me. Because you know, as the brand new faculty was going to start teaching, you have this idea that oh, Howard, the students get bored, they're not interested, I'm not going to be engaging enough, or they're not gonna pay attention. Something like brains like to think that was a whole new challenge was okay, they want to do this, I just need to make them want to thing. So yeah, that was how I got into it.

7:54  
Jim: Wonderful. Now, it makes me think so many of us that are university professors, we're tired often because of our research skills, and then expected to teach and do that really well. I think that's changing. By the way, I think a lot of our students today have formal teaching experiences that I didn't have. And some of you didn't have either as part of your graduate experience, necessarily. But there always are opportunities. And I know that my own teaching has progressed and evolved over time. Well, it's important that we see ourselves as students as well as teachers. And that

8:26  
Leonor: That's true, actually, throughout, the more I taught, I continue to interact a lot with the Center for Excellence and Learning and Teaching. They put on regular workshops, you know, sometimes there are webinars, sometimes it's a week long series, or it's a semester long series. And that has also been really, really helpful. Just because you get to network with other people who are passionate about teaching, you get to learn about newer methods, you know, and just different approaches, you can troubleshoot with them as soon as they're very supportive community. So that has been really helpful to just to, you know, find opportunities to learn more and to continue to grow as a teacher, which I think is really key.

9:01  
Jim: Great. You mentioned team based learning or TBL. What is that?

9:05  
Leonor: Okay, so TBL is a teaching approach that was developed, you know, several decades ago. But it's based on the idea that you form groups of students at the beginning of the semester, and those groups stay throughout the semester. So these groups have four to six students. And it's a sort of a combination of the flipped classroom with other activities. So there's some key components that go into team based learning is groups that are four to six students and are quite diverse. So the students don't get to pick who they grew up with. The instructor has a system to make the group as diverse as possible in terms of maybe the major the level of you know what year and to college they are, the students are in, get this diverse group of students and from these different groups. And then another component is these tests. They call them rats. So the students get quizzes that they do individually, and then they repeat the same quiz within their group. And so these are quizzes that usually are about five to 10 questions, kind of quick quizzes. I focus on key concepts. So we're not going to go into a lot of detail. You provide readings or videos or some resource for the students to prepare before time. And so you're really trying to be sure that the students have the core knowledge before you go into them more discussion. So the students take the test on their own, they get the points for that for their individual knowledge. And then they don't see the answers to the quiz. So they retake that same test again, within their group. And they have a discussion. And so they get to decide as a group, what's the right answer? So the multiple choice ABCD. And that is really interesting, because it gives us you this opportunity to talk peer instruction, peer learning, which has been shown to be very effective, sometimes much more than learning from the teacher. And so they get to discuss things. And maybe I could give you an example of getting one of the first quizzes I give students, how often do you obtain food? So I may have? What's the way the fungi are paying for it? So are they autotrophs that obtain food through photosynthesis? So there's clearly a wrong answer there. Right? They autotrophs that obtain food from both live and dead materials. And then you have other heterotrophs that obtained food from live and dead materials. So the students and then it may be another option in there too. So usually, there's two options that are close. And student may have answered differently. Oh, yeah, they obtained food from live and dead materials. When they get to their group discussion. Some say, Well, I answered a well, I answered, see why? Well, because they don't think from live and dead materials. But remember, they're not auditors, they don't produce their own food. Oh, so all these light bulbs go off. And as an instructor, I can walk around the room and I can hear these discussions and see what questions they get stuck on, where they may be misconceptions from the reading. Then I asked them which questions you had more debate about. And we can revisit that I can give a mini lecture, or just provide an explanation. But it seems like they grasp the concepts a lot more, they're more willing to share their misunderstanding within their group, and they build that trust as the semester goes along. So there's this individual test and group test. And then another big component is what we call application exercises. So rather than me electric for 50 minutes, which I no longer, very rarely do, you know, the lecturing, maybe 20 minutes, as needed. Sometimes there's no lecturing at all, it's all group discussion. But even when I lecture, every 20 minutes, you stop and you have some application exercise. And this can be anything from you know, a case study or a very short, something where they have to answer again, ABC or D. So I may say, Okay, think about the management practices for plant diseases that we read about and you've quizzed about. So I know you have an understanding of the different practices. Now let's think of when some groups have powdery mildew, another set of groups maybe have a very wilt or something, it's okay, within your group talk about what management practices might be most appropriate for these disease cycles. And so they can come up with an answer to that, or I can say, you know, think of the disease triangle, think of management practices that targets the hosts, the environment, or the plant. And so they are applying their knowledge that they learned there and discussing with each other. And then also you can compare, and sometimes there's no right or wrong answer. So I may say, Okay, who answered at this? And some people raise their hand and the other group answered be okay, why did you think a was the right approach? Why do you think be so you generate a lot of discussions, that's a lot of the team based learning approach is to have the students engaged, not passively receiving knowledge, but applying their knowledge and making all these connections with other parts of their training. So yeah, the quizzes, the application exercises, and the mini lectures are kind of the basis for it.

13:22  
Jim: Number one, it sounds a lot of fun, I can see that this approach must really lead to great student engagement doesn't lead to better retention or better understanding of the topics.

13:34  
Leonor: So there's science out there showing that yes, it does. And because, again, they're applying and they're having multiple ways to interact with that, that source of information. So they read on their own in their own time, you know, at the pace, they want to have a chance to with low points, do the quiz. And then if they don't quite grasp that they have a chance to learn from their peers. And then they have an application exercise where we're revisiting the same topics again, and there's maybe added some depth to it. So yes, when I started adopting the system, I saw the grades got better. You know, I think overall, over the years, there's a trend that the grades got better. And then as far as retention, it definitely makes a difference. Because especially these days, we've just so much online that if you don't have a reason for the students to come to class, because I'm just going to look at the PowerPoints or read the chapter book or whatever, you know, at home. And so this is a way that the students enjoy it some more, the feedback I get from students are really positive that they really liked the discussions. And yeah, and then you can have a point, I mean, the quizzes, of course, their points, so students like to come for points. And then some colleagues will do TBL will have points for application exercises, they'll get points for peer evaluation. So within the group, they can rate each other and that's a part of the grade, maybe 10% or 5% of the overall grade. So that also encourages students. I don't do that. I haven't felt the need and usually I have good attendance in class. So yeah, I think it's very effective. And generally the students just look forward to the class more than if I was just lecturing. They feel there's a purpose to come there and they'll miss things if they don't come to class that are spontaneous, right discussions that come up. And also they get to a little bit more of a topic, right? It's not just me saying, This is what I think is important, I get to hear, Oh, you're interested about this topic, okay, let's go into more depth in that topic. Rather than pack a ton of information that they're not going to remember at the end of the semester, you give them the core concepts at whatever depth you think has instructors needs them, of course, objectives, course outcomes, and then you let them lead a little bit more how in depth, they want to go.

15:29  
Jim: Two things that really strike me as very positive way about this approach. Number one, the lectures are the many lectures that you give, really are geared towards specifically towards the content that students struggle with the most. So things that they sort of understand and get really don't need to focus on much. But the other piece is that you're enabling students to really think critically through problems, not just a collection of information or facts that you're sharing, but actually a thought process.

16:00  
Leonor: Yeah, I totally agree. You're making me think one of the key elements of my teaching is making things relevant to the students. And so they bring a lot of stories, I have them look at things in the news versus a mycology course is not just plant pathogens, we also fungi that affect human health, right kanji and truth engine industry. So I've learned a lot through the course too. But making it relevant to the students is really important.

16:23  
Jim: Does this approach work for undergrads or grad students?

16:27  
Leonor: The course I teach is a 400 level course. So generally, I have the seniors and juniors sometimes second years, I've had grad students in the past, I had more grad students, but now we have an advanced fungal pathogen course that students tend to take. I think it would work well, for both, I mean, definitely works great for the undergraduates. And I think the grad students are just as engaged. And oftentimes when I do have students in the course, and I distribute them, so that they are distributed among the different groups, and they have some additional insights that they share, a makes it very interesting for the students, when someone has a personal experience with, oh, this fungus that I saw, you know, in the field, and it was affect my mom's backyard, or there's mold growing on their strawberries in the kitchen. And one of the benefits for me as an instructor was that I can use my time in the classroom, it never seems like there's enough, right? 15 minutes twice a week, the golden rule of teaching, right? So how can I use this time most effectively? So if they can read at home? What are the names of the sexual spores of the Eskimos seeds, they're insects there comes in terms of aid, whether the fruiting structures that stuff that, why do I need to lecture about that they can read it easily. But then here's the lifecycle, right? The life cycle is complicated with this meiosis occur and carry Agha me and why are these things in the sequence? So then I get to mini lecture on this, okay, you already know the structures now how do they come together in their lifecycle? And then I have the new application exercise that may be a puzzle or something where they have the terms, the vocabulary, because as you know, I called you as you're learning a new language, it can be really overwhelming for students where it's like, oh, how do I learn all these words, and they used to struggle with that in like the tests and the more application exercise they get, the better. So I may have them do a 10 minute exercise where they're working together. Organizing, okay, first comes the ask before is germinates then it's going to form this ascocarp. And then meiosis happens here. Why does it or not, they get to ask them questions. And I get to walk around and say, Okay, you to think about the hifi and males this has to be before you have choreography, things like that. You can adjust to the student and really optimize and focus on the things they need to do explanations for rather than things they can just look on their own.

18:33  
Jim: Have you used this team-based learning approach in online delivery?

18:39  
Leonor: I did. So during COVID, I have to adapt quite well in a transition very well, you know, so what I did for the course was I had one of the lectures, I had live zoom. And the other lecture was a pre recorded lecture that the students got to watch on their own. But during the live zoom lecture, once a week, I could do the tests, the quizzes, so actually, I had the students with the individual tests on canvas on our software, just before the class, it was open for that period of time. So as soon as they got into the lecture, I break them out with Zoom breakouts, write breakout rooms, I break them out into their respective groups, they would have the little discussion and submit their answer. And actually, I had them do that on Zoom, there's a Quizlet option where the results Yep, so they right away, they can see how the answers broke down. And then I also use the breakout sessions for the group discussion. So then I can pop in and out, right and listen in or contribute. Some of Vandana, bring the whole group back. And so I could let you know, just like in the classroom, so that interaction was really important rather than just be offline, you know, just online but without the interaction with the instructor. So yeah, transition pretty well. The labs I did hold this course has labs have three hour lab every week. So the labs I did hold in person with extra safety measures and stuff like that, but the lectures Yeah, it was quite easy.

20:00  
Jim: That's great. And the other day, you mentioned to me that I was thinking you're part of a team based learning group. 

20:06  
Leonor: Yep. 

20:06  
Jim: What's that all about? And what is that done for you?

20:09  
Leonor: Yeah, it's a really helpful group. So when you get the initial training, there's a semester long, I think once every two weeks course that you take just to learn the principles. And you try, of course, being TBL, you're learning using team based learning. So a lot of the things we're actually experiencing ourselves as students in that course. So once you take that course, then you become a member of this group of TBL instructors, and they're from all over can have chemistry professors, you can have people in design, biological sciences, whatever. And so we meet once a month or so. And sometimes we have guest speakers. Sometimes we have troubleshooting sessions, where someone is saying, you know, I'm trying to do an application exercise on this topic, and I'm stuck here, I can't get the students to engage. So you have all these other very, you know, experienced teachers who say, have you tried this, this is what's worked in my class. So there's a lot of pure support, and learning from each other. So it's been really helpful. And once you get that core training, then you go in, and you become part of this community who shares their struggles and successes.

21:05  
Jim: It's great, I want to know more about team based learning, and I want to adopt it for my own teaching, they really do have a lot of great benefit. You also teach research ethics. And you and Mark Gleason offered, I think it's the very first course that APS has ever offered this semester long course called research ethics. Did you use team based learning for that? Or what was the focus of that class?

21:30  
Leonor: Yes, I wouldn't call it team based learning because it doesn't have these quizzes and these application exercises, but in a way, it's very much a discussion based class. So our origin of this course for APS was at ISU, one of our colleagues, Charlotte Bronson at the time started a course to train grad students soon and research ethics, part of this to meet requirements by NIH and NSF, for grad students and postdocs to have a certain amount of training to be able to participate in grants funded by those two agencies. So there's that requirement, but we thought we could go a little further and why not expand the topics beyond research misconduct. So this course has been growing as managed by the Graduate Studies program at ISU, and more and more departments have more and more faculty members want their students were willing the course. So the course is basically once a week, it's a flipped classroom. So they do a reading of a chapter or you know, different case studies or resources that we give them websites to prepare for a certain topic. And then we have 50 minutes discussion period where we the instructor reads all the assignments before class. So we get to see you know, how students understood the material. We are there questions, sometimes they submit questions for us, too. And then in the classroom is basically a large group discussion. I like small groups. And if you have a customer of 30 students, there's always going to be tourists that want to participate more and others are more quiet. So I tend to still do group work, I say, okay, spend the next five minutes talking with the three people beside you about how you answer to this question. And so then everybody has a chance to be talking and feel a bit more comfortable sharing their thoughts because it's in a small group. And so okay, and then I'll call them oops, okay, what did you guys think about this? What? What did you guys talk about any other insights you have? So I use some component of team based learning, but not real teams that stay together and more of discussion based? The topics we cover are pretty fast. So we start off with, you know, what is research misconduct? The the federal definition of plagiarism, data, fabrication, data falsification? So those are kind of the three big sins, right? And then why is there misconduct? What leads scientists to do misconduct? And then also, towards the end of the course, after we have the more discussions, we talked about interventions, what would you do? Or who could you talk to, if you have a concern, if you observe something you don't feel comfortable with? Or you see someone do something that you feel is misconduct, right? So giving them the resources and confidence to know how they should intervene or not intervene, depending on the situation? And then we also talk about things that relate to all of us scientists, right? Mentoring, what is good mentoring? What is poor mentoring? What kind of a mentor? Do you want to be authorship who How do you pick authorship? Who should the authors or not the authors write collaborations, grant writing and, you know, trouble that can happen when you have good collaborations, bad collaborations. So we do a lot of case studies, a lot of them, unfortunately, are based on real situations that people find themselves in conflicts of interest is another one. So it's a really engaging course. And students tend to participate really well. It's not a course where we struggle with students participating, because everybody's had some experience, right? Oh, my colleague went through this or the mentor wouldn't let him be an author or something like that, or they have questions and it can be also very importantly, we talk about the rules, right? IBC. So what are the rules to work with microbes with human subjects with animal subjects, you have to make sure you have approvals to work for certain organisms, right? You don't want to get to the end of your grad program or publish your work and you're not allowed to because you didn't have the proper approvals for that. So I think it's a very impactful course. So that started ISU and myself and Mark and there's many other instructors in other fields and other departments, and now in our department, too, so We We all contribute and teach a growing number of students who need the course. And so Mark had the ideas like we should offer this to more people. And so why not do the three Ps? And so yeah, last fall, we offered basically we modeled the course exactly on what we do at ISU students could get the certification that shows that they're met the requirements for NSF and NIH, was all through online. This was all online. Yep. We had close to 30 students. And there were students was a bigger diversity than we do at ISU, because I use mostly grad students. But we had some faculty. We have postdocs, we had grad students, and we had professionals diagnosticians, people work in industry. So it was a really nice, diverse group with all different levels of experience. And we did it on Zoom. So we had the same thing did the reading ahead of time, you'd lead the discussion, sometimes we do breakout so they can talk within their groups come up with what did you think of this case, so everybody gets a chance to talk and share their thoughts. And then we bring it back to the big group. And the feedback we got was really great. Everybody said was so helpful, and that we should be talking more about these topics. And that really made them think about things in a different way. And so we're excited to offer it again, we're hoping that next spring, we can offer the course again,

26:10  
Jim: That's great. So stay tuned, APS, that class is coming back. In addition to all the other teaching that you do, this past spring, you also led a study abroad group to Portugal, telescopic group, what the class was about how many students participated and what your experiences were?

26:30  
Leonor: Yeah, so that's been kind of brewing my mind for a while. I'm originally Portuguese, I did my undergraduate project there. And I may be a little biased, but particularly beautiful country, we have a very diverse agriculture that where I will students, you know, they've never seen all of us and grapevines and cork production. So there's a lot of the Mediterranean agriculture that you really have to travel abroad to be able to experience. And also being a small country. We don't have vast agricultural crops, we have a different approach to agriculture. We're also dealing a lot with things like desertification and impacts of drought and climate change. So we can be innovative with certain of the approaches we have. I offer the course together with colleagues in animal science, because they were interested also. And we have like the Iberian pig production, and we have sheep and roll and more traditional methods to kind of regional artisanal production of cheeses and meats. And so this particular group, we traveled to Portugal is a group of 24 students from different agricultural majors, microbiology, animal science, international ag microbiology, diverse group. And we basically went over spring break at a 10 day stay in Portugal and we move throughout the country visited farms, talk to growers looked at all of our production, or production, the cattle facilities, you know, a lot of these social economic impacts are really learning about the agriculture of a different country. And of course, embedded in that was what pests are affecting the olives. What diseases are a problem on grapes? How do we treat them? How do you know there's a biological olive oil, there's a non biological olive oil. So just exposing students to all that I think going forwards, I think the students again responded really well thought it was a great, great experience. But my goal is that maybe the course can diversify. And there may be groups that go with more of an animal focus. And I could lead a group that's more in the plant pathology because there's, there's a lot we could spend two weeks just looking at pests and insects and pests and diseases of all these different agricultural crops. So yeah, I won't offer this year but I think next year I'll it makes me feel more connected to my country. And having grown up there, I have insights, I can talk about some of the history, some of the culture, there's a dam that was produced to irrigate a lot of these crops in the kind of a dry region that had huge social impacts in the region to there's villages that were flooded, and people had to relocate. So there's a lot of opportunity to talk about the bigger picture of agriculture beyond crop and its diseases. It's just how we're all interconnected in these impacts that agriculture has.

28:56  
Jim: And that's what a university education should be about - broadening those horizons and Plant Pathology, I always think of global science. We're living through this pandemic, right, we understand how pathogens can easily jump borders and disease can impact globally, or types through in plant health issues as well. And of course, beyond being incredibly fun, I'm sure really opened a lot of eyes and broaden horizons.

29:20  
Leonor: Yes, you have a strong history of a strong culture of study abroad, have a great support system within the College of Ag and then throughout the university. And you know, Mark and others have that courses to Costa Rica and from other countries, different approaches, and I think it really does enrich the training of our students.

29:39  
Jim: So as somebody who obviously is passionate about teaching Plant Pathology, what advice do you have for students in plant pathology or early career professionals want a career in teaching in plant pathology? What advice do you have for them in their professional preparation?

29:57  
Leonor: It's really important. Don't be shy about seeking out opportunities to teach or do any sort of other public speaking, whether it's extension talking to growers, there's a lot of overlap between you're talking to an audience of growers and teaching has, of course, other elements. But anything you could do that involves public speaking in the first place, right, talking to growers talking to give seminars on your department, but then more specifically with teaching, most professors will be more than happy to have a grad students say, doing research nematodes. If you're going to cover this in your class, can I give I mean electro or full lecture, and come talk to your students, and it takes a lot of practice and picks learning I don't think anybody's born a natural teacher, I mean, you may have an inclination for it, but there's a lot of things you can improve on over the years. I mean, continuous improvement is kind of another goals of teaching. So seeking out those opportunities as much as possible, seeking out not only like being out there in the classroom and teaching, but also are there training like selves in our in our university offers a ton of workshops, right, so just thinks about like rating, what goes integrating things, you have to consider the diversity in the classroom, new teaching technology that can be used in the classroom, for quizzes, and to make it more interactive. There's lots and lots out there and looking out in your own university for those kinds of opportunities, and branching out beyond our path of research so much times that we focus on that, right. And then also, if you really think about a career and my faculty career, I know ASU has a preparing future faculty program, that's a two year program students enroll, and they get all sorts of different training and one of the semesters focuses on teaching. So how do you put together a teaching portfolio that you have to have a teaching experience of a certain number of hours. So there are opportunities out there, and I'm sure there's some also beyond what the university can offer. Just get out there, try it out and start building a little bit of that curriculum for so many of us go into a faculty position without having much formal training. And if you're a TA, that's great, help the students but also say, "Can I introduce the lab activities today," because that's something else you can add, and it'll give you a leg up. And it will make you stand out when you apply for jobs rights, like ITA. But I also rated, you know, the submissions of the assignments or I also offered a couple of lectures,

32:04  
Jim: That's great advice. Iwant our audience to know that the teaching that we talked about today in the courses you've taught, that's 30% of your appointment is teaching. And you've had such tremendous impact and obviously a clear passion for this. And I really enjoyed the conversation today. Congratulations to you on receiving the 2022 APS Excellence in Teaching Award.

32:28  
Leonor: Thank you very much do is a real pleasure to talk to you.

32:32  
Jim: Yeah, thanks so much. We just heard from Dr. Leonor Leandro, professor at Iowa State sharing her perspectives, and experiences in teaching plant pathology. I'm Jim Bradeen, the host of Plantopia podcast. Thank you for tuning in. We'll talk next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai