Centre for Teaching Excellence

Marina is a science educator with over 8 years experience in course (re)design, development and delivery at the university level. She uses her training in plant and medical genetics and her teaching experience to channel the inner scientist of all learners.

Marina holds an MSc in plant molecular biology from York University and a PhD in molecular genetics from U of T. She completed a Teaching Fellowship at Quest University Canada focusing on developing and delivering the Life Sciences Foundation program and joined the Faculty at Quest in 2016 where she contributed to the Life Sciences and Interdisciplinary curriculum and directed the Capstone program. She has also taught at the University of Toronto. Her current scholarship of teaching & learning focuses on recruitment and retention of diverse learners to the fields of genetics and genomics, antiracist pedagogies, and alternative forms of student feedback for course review and renewal. She has a forthcoming chapter on teaching & mentoring in genetics & genomics published by Elsevier, expected summer 2023.

Marina is excited to support Faculty at Capilano. She has over 7 years experience mentoring and coaching teaching faculty and is keen to share her experiences and resources for using interdisciplinary learning, inquiry-based lab learning, student-centred pedagogies, and process-based pedagogies (e.g. peer review, writing to learn) in in-person and online modalities. She has experience leading workshops on mentoring, interdisciplinary teaching & learning, how to effectively present data to expert and non-expert audiences, and teaching the complexities of genomics. Marina also has a lot of experience implementing small changes on a short time frame, and greatly enjoys helping educators troubleshoot challenges they encounter in their practice.

When not nerding out about molecular genetics or pedagogy, Marina is typically nerding out about what new recipes to try for dinner (in vain hope that her children might eat something).