Bio Undergraduate Coordinators & Technical Staff Team

Team members

Julie Freund, Mihaela Georgescu, Scott Hughes, Sajeni Mahalingam, Natalie Mari, Tracy Rerecich, Alastair Tracey and Stan Zolinski

Courses

6 biology courses (Levels II & III) | 30-398 students

Their story

The Department of Biology Undergraduate Coordinators and Technical Staff Team work tirelessly to ensure our courses provide the best possible learning environments. Since March 2020, this team has excelled in both providing the Department and our students with unwavering support, and in undertaking unprecedented resource development. Specifically, this team successfully transitioned the instructional modalities of 6 courses with in-person labs across levels 1-3, into on-line lab experiences involving lab demonstrations and experimental simulations for over 1100 students (BIO2A03, BIO2D03, BIO2EE3, BIO3B03, BIO3U03, MolBiol3M03).

These incredible staff members developed a collaborative workflow for every lab. This included scripting and storyboarding each video (with assistance from faculty and teaching assistants), recording narratives on a Science Media Lab-provided iPhone, and editing countless hours of raw videos to produce a final lab video each week. To accompany each video, they further created time-lapsed photos and data-sets for students to download and analyze.

We are so grateful and proud of our Undergraduate Coordinators and Technical Staff for being such dedicated, collaborative and innovative members of the Biology team. Having only a week to turn around a video from start to finish, this team stepped up to do whatever was needed to get the work done, regardless of whether this part of their job description. Everyone in the Department has benefited from their resilience and creativity, and their care and support, from our students to our faculty. Thank you all so very much!

Please direct your inquiries to: rosa.dasilva@mcmaster.ca