Q: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

A: I did most of my growing up in the Seattle area. When I was an undergrad, I went down to San Diego (to UCSD) and then moved to Davis for my graduate degree. So I’ve lived in Davis for about six years-ish for graduate school. But I’m not a native Californian by any stretch of the imagination. Not that there’s anything wrong with native Californians—just putting it out there!

Q: Your major?

A: As an undergraduate, general biology and as a graduate student, human physiology.

Q: When did you realize you wanted to become a teacher?

A: I’ve been interested in teaching on and off since I was probably 8 years old, which sounds kind of bizarre. I volunteered in my elementary school when I was still an elementary-school student, and then kept up the relationship, so I worked at the elementary school all through high school and when I started college. Then as soon as I started grad school I began TA-ing on campus and lecturing also for some of the classes that were closer to my specialties. So I’ve loved teaching in some capacity for a very long time.

Q: I hear you’ve won some awards.

A: Yes, I did. So there’s an award at UC Davis called the Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award, and I was nominated for that and won two years ago or so. There are two physiology labs that I have taught. I started out and filled the requirement for my graduate program with the basic physiology lab, and then I got recruited into the advanced physiology lab and I taught that for a few years. It was for that lab that my students nominated me for the award. It was very sweet of them. It’s a lot of work to go through any nomination procedure like that—kind of like an application that I’m sure you’re all familiar with—so it was really nice of them to put their time forward to do something like that.

Q: So, this is your first time teaching high-school students? Are you excited? Nervous?

A: I’m really excited, a little bit nervous. It’s been really nice being here the past few days and getting to meet people and finding out that everyone at Country Day has been really awesome so far, so now I’m more excited and less nervous.

Q: So you’ve been sitting in on Dr. Whited’s classes. Seeing as how you’re coming in as a sub, how do you plan on dealing with that?

A: She’s very well organized, so I’m really lucky that Dr. Whited was the teacher I’m coming in to sub for. She has really great outlined lesson plans and a structure for the whole year. I plan on at least in the beginning following the outline that she’s laid out and trying to adhere to the standards that she’s established for the class because I don’t want this to be a really abrupt break from one person’s style to another person’s. But she’s also said that if I find topics that are particularly interesting or have other ideas about how I’d like to tweak the curriculum go for it.

Q: Do you have a Facebook?

A: No. I’m a hold-out. I’m old school.

Q: How did you end up taking this position?

A: There’s a professor at UC Davis named Professor Bautista, who Dr. Whited had worked with successfully when she was a graduate student. So when Dr. Whited was doing some investigating about someone to take over this position, she contacted Dr. Bautista to see if he knew anyone. I had taught with Dr. Bautista as well, and he knew I loved teaching and was interested in possibly pursuing it as a career option.

Q: Children? Married?

A: No and no.

Q: What do you do in your free time?

A: At grad school you don’t have that much free time, but I’m a really big reader. When I don’t have to be reading scientific articles, I like to be reading whatever happens to be sitting on my bookshelf at the time. I also like to be outdoors. I’m a big walker and like to be sit outside in the sunshine, something we didn’t get too much of growing up in the Seattle area.

Q: What kind of music do you like?

A: Oh, alternative. I’m sort of broad spectrum, but since I grew up in the Seattle area I was coming of age during the Greenwich movement, and that really influenced my musical tastes.

Q: What kind of car do you drive?

A: A Toyota Corolla. And it’s silver, so it matches about 99.9 percent of all the other cars in the parking lot at any given time.

Q: Do you subscribe to any magazines?

A: I do—Bon Appetit.

Q: You like to cook?

A: I do.

Q: If you could add anything to the science department, such as new equipment, what would it be?

A: Do I have an unlimited budget? I worked with a software system at Davis a lot—it’s called the Biopac system and we used to do a lot of physiology experiments with it, so I might aim for something like that as well as some experimental setups like simulators so we could do some more in-depth physiology experiments. I’m a big physiology dork, so that’s always my favorite.

Q: If you could live in any city in the world, where would it be?

A: I’d probably have to go with Paris. When I was an undergraduate, I actually spent a year abroad in Toulouse, the south of France, and I loved it I really loved Toulouse, but I would love to go back to Paris to experience the faster-paced lifestyle there. I’ve visited Paris a number of times but never had the chance to live there.

Q: Where would you most like to travel?

A: I’ve never been to Africa before and it sounds amazing. Most of my traveling has been pretty much limited to near Europe and England, as well as the United States, so it would be nice to branch out to a couple of other continents.

Q: Your greatest accomplishment?

A: It might have actually been the year I lived in France. It was a very odd experience to transport yourself to a different culture and survive there for a year. While it’s not extremely difficult, it became kind of a roller coaster; the high times were really high and the low times were like “I can’t believe I decided to do this for a year! What was I thinking?” But to stick it out, finish all my coursework in French, and survive that experience—to come away with a positive outlook on it and not be totally jaded by the experience— that’s probably it.