“In my lectures, I regularly use Powerpoint slides, graphics, and pictures and show a few minutes of a documentary video to transport my students to another place and time or to put a human face to the concepts I am teaching. This even goes so far as to bring implements; when I lecture about Huaorani hunting, for example, I will often bring skulls of favorite Neotropical prey species as well as my blowgun and demonstrate its power by shooting a balloon across the room (no students have ever been harmed in such a demonstration).”
Flora Lu is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at UCSC and Provost of Colleges Nine and Ten. She earned her A.B. in Human Biology from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow, Royster Society Fellow, and Lang Post-Doctoral Fellow, Flora began conducting research in the Amazon while as an undergraduate in 1992. Her longitudinal fieldwork among indigenous communities in the northeastern Ecuador has been featured in two programs on the National Geographic Channel, has been funded by $2.2 million in external grants, and has been published in two books and thirty-five articles in journals such as Human Ecology, Conservation Biology, Current Anthropology, Human Organization, and the Journal of Ecological Anthropology. She is the recipient of the Committee on Teaching’s Excellence in Teaching Award (2011) and the Division of Social Sciences “Golden Apple” Distinguished Teaching Award (2010).
Interview Questions
0:00 Introduction
0:14 What is your research like, and how does it affect your teaching?
2:11 What would you say are the biggest barriers to student success?
4:32 What do you do on the first day of class that creates a strong learning environment for your students?
7:18 What’s the best class you’ve ever taught?
8:34 Closing Thoughts?
Teaching Statement
Flora Lu Teaching Statement
Course Materials
LALS 100A Syllabus: Social Science Analytics
ENVS 154 Syllabus: Amazonian Cultures and Conservation
Contact
Website: http://people.ucsc.edu/~floralu/Welcome.html
Email: floralu@ucsc.edu
Phone: (831) 459-1994
Office: Natural Sciences II, Room 479