Andrew Petzold, Ph.D.

Education

B.A., Biology, Hamline University, 2005 

Ph.D., Comparative Molecular Biology, University of Minnesota, 2010 

Teaching at UMR
I believe that for a student to thrive educationally, the student must have a want to learn and a relatability to the subject being approached. In all of my classes, I attempt to teach using this philosophy, placing the student at the center of the classroom creating an environment best suited for student learning. To do this, I use a number of different active learning based teaching techniques and real-life examples that can bring the intricacies of knowledge to the student. 

Research
I've focused my research efforts on attempting to better understand how to best prepare students to communicate their scientific knowledge with others. This has fallen into two complementary categories – allowing students to best communicate their content knowledge to instructors and examining how students communicate their content knowledge to non-scientific audiences.

These efforts both serve to better understand how students use the classroom space as a conduit for describing and demonstrating their abilities to communicate but look at this ability through differing lenses. To best prepare students to communicate their knowledge to professors, I've written case studies and implemented innovative teaching ideas such as "Essay Roulette" a way to reduce test anxiety."

View Select Publications and Abstracts