About
Jake Greenberg
| Dr. Jacob "Jake" Greenberg was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Jake earned 2 Bachelor's degrees from the University of New Mexico in Chemistry and Biology, and Jake went on to earn his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Colorado: Boulder. Jake began his teaching career in the California State system teaching undergraduate chemistry courses. Jake has since moved back to Albuquerque to teach at UNM. Jake's research interests include student success, food insecurity, mosquito feeding patterns, the implications for disease transmission, and new methods of vector control. Jake's personal interests include jigsaw puzzles and gardening. |  |
Teaching Philosophy
Student-centered teaching is a topic that I have extreme passion for. Learning how to become a better student is a lifelong skill that can always be improved upon, and it goes far beyond the classroom. I love being a student and will always consider myself a lifelong learner. I want my students to feel the same way about their education. Since beginning teaching in 2008, I have fundamentally changed how I teach. When I began, I taught how I was instructed: lecture style, no group work, no collaboration, no extra credit, and 4 exams determining our fate. I have since recognized the many opportunities for growth in my teaching, and I have implemented a student-centered and trauma-informed curriculum into my teaching.
My teaching style is always evolving, but I have taken on a few central pillars: 1. Encourage independent exploration, 2. Never claiming to be an infallible expert, 3. Cooperative learning strategies, and 4. Allowing mistakes without penalty. I always encourage students to find resources to help problem solve instead of depending on me for answers. This involves assigning outside investigation homework that requires research as I guide students through the process. As the classroom “expert” it is easy to tell the students how to solve problems, but another issue entirely is whether the students learn from simply being told. To combat this, I employ a flipped classroom or student-driven discussions when possible, and I thoroughly enjoy it when the students present work that teaches me something new as well. Experience has taught me that a student coming to the answer on their own is far more useful for knowledge retention than simply dictating an answer. I teach the FYEX 1010 Foundational Math course at UNM and we employed an emporium-style classroom, which can be described as making a transition from the “sage of the stage” to a “tutor in the trenches,” where most of the time is spent working 1-on-1 with students who need the help. The emporium model, with self-driven learning, has proven that students retain math knowledge better compared to a traditional style classroom. This style of teaching has shown me that equity is possible in the mathematics classroom, and now I see that meeting students where they are can be achieved in smaller, emporium-style classes where a growth mindset is emphasized.
Research Statement
My research currently is centered broadly around student success. The more my team and I dive into the literature the more we see how broad this topic can be. Currently, there are 7 students actively researching in the group, each with a unique project aimed at making the student experience better. Diversity is an important part of any research group and the team I have assembled represents the UNM population and, thus, many different traditionally under-represented groups.
As a Foundational Math (FM) Lecturer, my research began with the assessment of the course I was hired to teach. In 2015, we began to utilize a trauma-informed curriculum in tandem with an AI platform to teach the FM course, and since implementing the pass rates significantly increased compared to the 4 years before. This project will be extended to surveying students for their attitudes in math and relating that to their GPA, and subsequent performances in higher-level math courses. We are also assessing the population that utilizes FM’s unique incomplete pathway to extend the class by several weeks to complete the course, and we have found that over 8 years 6% (242) of students attempt the incomplete pathway and 5% (171) have successfully used this pathway.
Our work is now extending to other courses and topics in general. We are interested in assessing Critical Text Analysis what factors are driving student success, and how participation in this course affects pass rates in subsequent high fail-rate courses. Food insecurity is a major issue for college students, but we don't know how much this affects FYEX or international students on campus. We are designing an experiment to determine how free food in the classroom impacts attendance and GPA. Administration being able to communicate effectively with students has a major impact on enrollment, and we are designing a study to determine what social media apps or websites students use to get their news information in order to focus communication efforts.
