TEACHING PHILOSOPHY 

My goal is to contribute elemental awareness to future professionals in the areas of contemporary design, decision-making processes for buildings and cities, healthy indoors and responsible energy consumption.

Collaborating in teaching teams with professors who are leaders in their fields gave me the opportunity to build my character and blend the student and teaching experience. I have had the opportunity of bringing important planning improvements to their classes. What can be richer in terms of testing myself than confronting my ideas with an expert. Beyond the “behind the scenes” interaction with dozens of classes, I am continuously exposed to large audiences of hundred and up to a thousand students. Today, I am lecturing with my own material, product of my experience and research. By focusing in the experience as building users, I use learners’ experience and expectations to develop semi-structured instructional methods for teaching classes around six areas: history of art and architecture, green buildings, sustainable cities, adaptation and resilience of urban societies, healthy built environments, and the impacts of air quality in energy consumption. 

My semi-structured instructional methods consist in a flexible schedule for meeting the learning objectives. The three priorities of my teaching are:

• The importance of the learner’s self-awareness about the use of the built environment.

• The core concepts in sustainability and indoor environmental quality.

• The qualitative and quantitative assessment of learning.

Learner’s self–awareness: I initiate my courses by applying strategies that tackle the curiosity and natural empathy for sustainable life by using discussions, collaborative activities, inquiry based learning and debates for scanning the state of knowledge and competence of the class as well as for finding the areas of interest.

Core concepts: Online and face-to-face materials are developed to address key information that will be used in combination with computer simulations and mapping activities. This combination provides guidance for students to recognize, analyze, and interpret new knowledge in a context of real case studies and science based models. 

Assessment of the student learning: Assessment is of my highest respects and concerns; therefore, I dedicate 85% of my grading criteria to qualitative learner centered grading using reflective and collaborative activities in groups and individually as well as to midterm feedback surveys, and 15% to quantitative grading for evaluating the understanding of key concepts, methods and models. This assessment approach prioritizes learner centered techniques while dedicating a small traditional evaluation component in form of quizzes.

I am open to discussions and debate at all times and I am a strong believer in scientific evidence of both, anthropogenic causes and natural cycles impacting human health, environmental degradation, climate change and global warming. I will be honored to have students with different perspectives about those topics, since I consider that the more we address them, the more we can agree on how to proceed in future decisions. Future generations of decision makers must have the power that knowledge offers to empower them.

My commitment is to supply scientific evidence of the physical and social interactions between the built and natural environments using a realistic perspective of the roles that the design, construction, and operating processes of a building play in the impacts on our resources is the pathway for me to expand awareness and inspire well-informed decisions in future professionals in a variety of backgrounds. Therefore, in preparation for my teaching practice, I am studying learner centered strategies including classroom assessment for adapting myself to the evolution of education. My practice will be defined by my dedication to keeping my semi-structured instructional methods open to the learners’ priorities.

Sincerely yours,

Sandra Bernal Cordova