Off The Cuff: Heather Townsend

May 12, 2020

Our CCRI faculty and staff are a diverse group with many fascinating hobbies and interests that keep them busy during their free time off campus. Welcome to "Off the Cuff." Every other week, we'll profile a member of our CCRI family to find out what makes them tick. Hopefully, their stories inspire others and help us develop new connections and friendships with our CCRI colleagues.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced faculty and staff at CCRI to adapt to a new way of working and learning. For many, it's been a challenge, but our dedicated employees have taken advantage of this unique opportunity and, in some cases, learned new ideas and methods that have actually made them more efficient in the virtual classroom or home office.

Associate Professor of Biology Heather Townsend has always made the most of her time at CCRI. Last year, she attended a workshop for the Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences Network (CURE), which taught biology professors how to integrate research projects into their cirriculum, and networked with the founder to bring a similar workshop to CCRI. In June, the college became one of only four in the nation to host a CURE workshop that year and the only two-year school on the list.

Since transitioning to online teaching, Townsend has found the time for new initiatives, webinars and workshops to continue fine-tuning her craft – all while helping raise five children at home! This week, we caught up with Townsend to learn her secrets of time management and how the quarantine has made her even more well-rounded in her profession. 

For you, what has been the biggest challenge of remote learning / teaching?

For me, the biggest challenge has been finding time to get everything done. I have children of my own at home that are also doing remote learning so finding alone (and quiet) time has been hard. Another big challenge as far as my instruction was finding suitable labs for my students to do. Since I teach courses that have a lab component as well as lecture, students would not get the hands-on experience that they would if they were face-to-face. I spent a great deal of time searching for virtual labs and simulations that I felt could come close to what they would have had physically in the lab. Unfortunately, there were some aspects that had to be changed, such as my student's group lab-based projects, but, in the end, I truly feel that they got a great education (maybe even a better one) since they were exposed to things they normally would not have been.

How do you find time to balance family with work?

In the beginning when everything was shut down I had my husband to help, so I would spend the entire day and night working on materials. Once my husband was considered an essential employee and not home a lot, I would spend the day helping my oldest three with their schoolwork. When my husband would get home, I would then head to my home office and work the rest of the night, oftentimes until 2 am. Obviously, things have slowed down now that we are at the end of the semester. Knowing that my students were depending on me gave me the energy that I needed (as corny as that sounds!).

What do you miss the most about in-person teaching?

Everything! I am very enthusiastic, energetic, and active with my teaching and students. I tried very hard to mirror that through Zoom meetings and constant emails, but it is hard to mirror in-person teaching perfectly (for me). For example, if we were in a lab situation where I needed to give further explanations, I could sense that in the classroom. It's hard when students are online to have that same feel, but I tried my best to be active and engaged in an online setting and hoped that students felt comfortable enough to ask for help when needed.

How will this experience change how you teach once everything goes back to normal?

It already has changed me for the better. Often, we get comfortable teaching when things are working and sometimes do not always have the free time or reason to change. The resources and opportunities that I have found for students were amazing – resources and connections that I otherwise would not have found or made. I will keep a lot of the labs and assignments that I have created and offer them to students once we are back to "normal." I will continue to try to find the silver lining of this situation and hope that we can all find something to be positive about. If I had not been thrust into online teaching, I would not have discovered and connected these types of opportunities for my students. For example, I attended a webinar and a colleague mentioned that Neil Shubin – one of the greatest paleontologists of our time that discovered Tiktaalik, the "fishapod" that shaped evolutionary history – was offering to Zoom to selected classrooms during this pandemic. I reached out to him and he is doing a Q&A with my students in June! This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity would not have happened had we not been in this situation and I was not actively looking for extra resources for my students.

Can you give us some insight on some other projects you’re working on (seminars, professional development opportunities, etc.)?

One of the other great opportunities that faculty have been exposed to is the exponential increase in webinars and professional development due to the pandemic. Typically, you attend conferences that you would have to travel to (I had two cancelled because of this), but with Zoom and other platforms there are a lot of companies and organizations that are offering virtual webinars and meetings. I lost count, but I have attended close to 30 webinars over the past two months, many of which I normally would not have time to attend with my teaching load. I made a lot of great connections and was exposed to pedagogical online teaching strategies that I am very thankful for. Every Friday, I joined roughy 40 other Microbiology professors across the nation to share and discuss our strategies and problems. I created a shared drive with resources, labs, pictures, etc., that other professors have contributed to in order to create a pool of resources that we could all use. I also was on the task force through the American Society for Microbiology to revise the most current biosafety standards that we just published last year to include recommendations for professors in response to at-home Microbiology kits. Since most Microbiology labs are done face-to-face, there has never been any safety guidelines written to help professors with protecting those students in an online environment. This was by far the most important opportunity I was involved in. The fact is that I would never have had the time normally to be involved and exposed to all of these extra opportunities; for that, I am thankful!

You mentioned you have five children at home. How old are your children?

I have five children at home ages 11, 8, 7, 2, and 1 – very active, enthusiastic and great kids!! They are the reason that I believe in offering students the BEST education that they can have. I took this opportunity having to move online as a challenge and one that I wanted to come out and say that I did my students justice. They deserve the best and it was up to us as professors to guide them. I am also on the school committee for my town and saw the wonderful work that all teachers have done to educate and provide the best for their students – absolutely inspiring!

We would love to hear your story, too! Email us at [email protected] if you’d like to be featured in a future edition of “Off the Cuff” or want to nominate a co-worker.

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