Ihab Younis

My teaching philosophy revolves around keeping my courses (and my knowledge of the subject matter) up to date, including research-supported pedagogical approaches to education. I am thus constantly updating my courses, whether content-wise or approach to teaching. I rely heavily on active learning strategies that keep the students engaged and help with their retention. Recently, I also started to focus on concepts of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEI&B) in my teaching. I was awarded the provost inclusive teaching fellowship in 2020 which I applied to the Molecular Biology course that I teach. For this I decided to focus on one important challenge: “gender bias in science.” As a teacher whose students are mostly females, I am convinced that I can do something about this bias. To me teaching inclusively encompasses that I highlight the amazing contributions of woman in science, especially biology, to help young female students get a sense of belonging in this often male-dominated field, and hopefully inspire them to continue in the footsteps of the great female biologists who paved the way for them.
I also would like to highlight teaching undergraduate research courses. I truly love teaching research courses at CMUQ as I interact one-on-one with the students to teach them lab skills, trouble shooting, proper data collection and analysis, and writing and presentation skills. Each of the students is unique in terms of their project, scientific development and character, which makes my task of equally lift them all to the same level challenging but very exciting at the same time. Thus, I dedicate a significant portion of my time helping them grow as scientists.