TLT Symposium Reflection

The symposium was a show of great ideas and technological innovations for use in teaching, all very good, some very bold, some easy to apply, others not so much... But yet, in the middle of those talks, in between trying hard to follow the speakers fast English - sometimes loosing track of it - and trying to picture all that being applied, I felt like "wow, that's so much... why again are people trying so hard to incorporate all that in the classrooms?". 

This sounds like a very stupid question I guess. But I think at that moment I was relating this to what I experienced from the education system in which I grew up in Brazil, where in a big number of colleges and schools, specially the public ones, there is a noticeable lack of infra-structure, transportation, textbooks, and preparedness of teachers. It just sounds like too much when there is a need for the basic things first, kind of like putting modern racing tires in a 1940 VW beetle that won't go past 50 mph.

That is why I think for me the most marking moment of the event was Dan Heath's talk. It was... eyeopening when he made everyone realize the reason why many don't achieve their course dream. When he reasoned about the importance of the syllabus and the appropriate way to make it. When he gave a lesson on how to make ideas stick, how to catch students attention and make them want to learn... The more conceptual tone of his presentation, showing the role of the professor's skills and understanding of their students learning process on their actual learning, independent of how many technological devices you have at your disposition, was something that I could see yielding more results at the moment. At least from my perspective.

Student introduction: Mariana Fontana Westphalen, Animal Science M.S. Student

My name is Mariana Fontana Westphalen, I am on the second semester of a M.S. program in Animal Science, being advised by Dr. Tara. L Felix and focusing my studies on beef cattle nutrition. I am original from Brazil, my family has some agricultural background, my father is a farmer and so was my grandfather, and this might sound somewhat cliché but all that had some influence on me when choosing a career.

So, I decided to study agronomy. Last year I obtained my bachelor’s degree in Agronomic Engineering at University of São Paulo and came straight to State college in pursue of a M.S. degree. My interest in cattle begun during my second year of college on an internship with ruminant nutrition, where I had the opportunity to work both with sheep and cattle.

I met my current advisor in a beef and dairy conference in Brazil in 2015, I went to speak to her and  ended up in an internship under her supervision in Illinois, she was a professor there back then. After my internship I went back to Brazil, finished my undergrad and applied for a M.S. here.

I look forward to finishing my studies. In the short term I would like to work with extension, the academic world could be more appealing to me if I didn’t feel awkward teaching in a classroom environment, but I hope this class will help perhaps changing that, and in a longer term I see the possibility of going back home to work with my family.