Lecturer Swarna Mohan's Personal Story

I was born in India, but moved to Pittsburgh, PA when I was 11 years old. I got my undergraduate degree and my Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh and started my teaching career at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). When I started at CMU, my position was a temporary one, as I was covering for an instructor who was out for a year while trying to find postdoc or industry positions. However, I found the experience so rewarding that I stayed at CMU for two more years and got to teach one of my favorite courses, a year-long undergraduate research course that was part of the SEA-PHAGES program. Mentoring and teaching first-year students as they completed a short research project in phage genomics was a great experience and cemented my decision to continue pursuing a teaching career.

After CMU, I moved to San Diego and taught biology labs and lectures, including a version of the phage genomics course, at UCSD for two years. Although I loved the abundance of adorable reptiles in San Diego, I did not enjoy relentlessly sunny weather (Pittsburgh is a fairly cloudy city!). San Diego is a great place to visit, however I was happy to move back to the East Coast after a few years. I started at UMD towards the end of July 2019 and was able to have one “normal” semester before the COVID-19 pandemic. Converting an introductory biology lab to an online format was not something I had expected to do during my first year at UMD, however it turned out to be a helpful experience that allowed me to reevaluate the learning goals of the lab course. I look forward to continuing to work on making the lab course more inquiry based and engaging.

Written by Swarna Mohan