1) What is your current job title and your place of employment?

I am an Assistant Professor in Veterinary Anesthesiology (Tenure Track) at Louisiana State University, School of Veterinary Medicine.

2) Please briefly describe your new position and responsibilities at your job.

I teach 2nd-, 3rd-, and 4th-year veterinary students, mainly on veterinary anesthesia, but also on emergency and critical care, pharmacology, and physiology. I teach the clinical anesthesia rotation consisting of 3 week blocks for senior students. The students put in practice the knowledge acquired during the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year of veterinary school. I am also responsible for some lectures in some graduate courses for our graduate students and residents. My position includes 50% off-clinics time where I perform research, write research manuscripts, prepare lectures, and do committee work for the School of Veterinary Medicine.

3) Did your participation in the GCCUT program impact any part of your job attainment process?

Completing the GCCUT immensely helped me in the transition from graduate student to assistant professor. When I entered my new position, I already possessed most of the knowledge about the tenure process, teaching responsibilities and strategies, and teaching portfolio. In particular, having a structured portfolio that I can update and use for tenure promotion is a great advantage to start this process with. Also, I feel like the GCCUT gave me the tools and confidence to drift away from the classic lecture delivery, and make laboratories more engaging and interesting for the students. When possible, I now use a trivia format for laboratories in which team work and collaboration are learning goals, in addition to pure knowledge acquisition.

4) What specific aspects of your participation in the GCCUT program impacted your job attainment process?

The hiring committee at LSU SVM was very excited about hiring someone with an education in teaching besides the classic veterinary specialty education. I think that the fact that none of the other candidates had a teaching education background helped in this choice.

5) Is there anything else you would add about your GCCUT experience that you think would interest prospective students?

I can’t really speak for people going into a field different from academia, but I can say with certainty that the GCCUT program was essential in the development of my teaching persona. I have had the pleasure of working with amazing teachers, learning from discussions with classmates, and their experience in teaching. I have also found the creation of the teaching portfolio a pearl crowning this certificate, due to its applicability to the real-academic world in pursuing promotion. I would recommend this certificate to anyone interested in pursuing an teaching position at the college and graduate levels. We are all experts and specialists in our field, but that doesn’t make us experts and specialists in teaching!