One of the greatest assets USF has is its dedicated faculty. We have a group of people who are committed to teaching and research. We've managed to attract faculty who want to do both they believe that teaching informs the research and research informs their teaching. 

I learned so much about what are issues of relevance based on like what the students bring to to the class discussion right to our laboratory. 

I think back on what were the things I really enjoyed about my undergraduate experience and try to give those opportunities to my students. Things like for instance doing independent projects to telling the students okay we're going to spend half the semester learning basic microbiology and microscope skills and then the second half you are going to come up with a problem that you want to investigate and use these skills independently and you know the things that students come up with I'm blown away by the awesome projects that they think about that you know never would have crossed my mind and so it's really fun to kind of nurture that and encourage them to to think outside the box and think big. 

I try to give them as much free rein to discover things themselves but along the way I learned some things that they come up with which is part of why I'm here I love.

And I just learned so much that then I can take back and reflect on my own practice as a researcher right and how do I make this matter.

If my teaching is based on very solid research that I'm doing personally I can communicate that to students and so hopefully when they go out and do whatever they're gonna do they can do it more thoughtfully.

I always tell them there's two parts about doing science and the easy part even though it doesn't
seem easy when you're learning it is the sort of technical all the steps involved in the lab the manipulations sometimes the harder part is understanding the big picture why are we doing all of those manipulations and what is our real purpose and goal.

Sometimes when you are writing an essay or a poem and you're looking for that word you metaphorically go into your research bucket and you never know exactly what is going to come out right you might go in thinking you're looking for a scholarly book you read 20 years ago but what you might actually get is what your son said to you on the way to school that morning it's a kind of magic hat of oh goodness.


At USF faculty see their research as an opportunity to tell stories that haven't been told before to answer burning questions to advocate for change and to inspire people to think and feel differently.

Here we have this opportunity with the center to help celebrate inspire and recognize the research that faculty are doing I see my work my research in particular as an act of social justice it's something that involves communities and equal partnership and it must involve an advocacy agenda.

I believe that the university is in line with my own personal mission.

I wanted to be at a place where sort of socially engaged social justice research was welcome and I also wanted to be in a place where teaching was valued both of those things led me to USF. 

As long as it continues to be about social justice and and life-changing action I will love being
here.

I came to the University I meant other faculty members and I felt like the kind of work that I'm trying to do is welcome in a place like this I remember my experience.

I remembered how much I liked it and I want to provide that same kind of experience for my student especially at that really critical stage in a person's life or they're trying to figure out what they want to do with their life.

It's part of our center's job to continue to cultivate this presence of exciting academic work
that's being done but then also have the world recognize what our faculty are doing.

One of the unique aspects of USF is its encouragement of interdisciplinary collaboration what
they do a lot in the Middle East at least at the University where I was is a tremendous amount of collaboration across disciplines because you can learn so much from them and they can also learn a lot from you for instance there was a professor that wanted to do some work on diabetes which is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease so we did some work together and we're successful in publishing the information.


As writing a book it would seem like a solo endeavor but it's really a team project there's several members of my part here in physics that contributed I'm not a historian and there you have to really approach conveying history in a humble way and try to learn the way of historians I talk to a lot of historians about it so it's funny it was a really huge team effort in ultimately that helps me to be more rounded as a researcher that I draw from other fields but also can have conversations from people who are in those fields and maybe link up with them for research collaborations or at least have conversations and dialogues with them that help inform my perspectives.

The center is designed to celebrate what is good about us app and its faculty and the support faculty of the work that they do whether it be our programs to help faculty increase their skills and knowledge in new methodologies and technologies or to encourage interdisciplinary collaborations and new fields of inquiry or to give faculty a chance to have those exciting and intelligent academic conversations that we all remember having late nights in graduate school this is what we would like the center to be combination of those kinds of things fun events informative events and events that are designed to push inspire and nudge you to do the work that you want to do.