Kristiina J. Hurme

Kristiina Hurme holding a garter snake on a field tripTeaching BIOL 417 in a clownfish costumeTeaching as a tiger

Teaching

I teach undergraduates at every level at UW, from first-time science students in a 350-person lecture to Biology seniors in a 20-person seminar. My core conviction: biology is not abstract. Students are living it every day when their heart rate spikes on a run or a bird lands on a branch outside the lecture hall.

Every course starts with backwards design, and across all of them I emphasize quantitative literacy: reading graphs, spotting patterns, and reasoning from data students have never seen before.

Current courses

BIOL 452 · Vertebrate Biology

I redesigned the field component into small, weekday, on-campus trips. Students log 20 vertebrate species on iNaturalist and teach their peers from the primary literature.

BIOL 497B · Community Science Seminar

A course I built from scratch. Students design and lead public BioBlitz events on campus, acting as naturalist-educators. More on community science →

BIOL 417 · Reproductive Physiology of Vertebrates

Invited researcher presentations, primary-literature discussion, and in-class graphing worksheets situate humans in their evolutionary context.

BIOL 118 · Survey of Physiology

Active learning at scale: daily Scientist Spotlights featuring researchers students can see themselves in, supported by a team of 10–15 Peer Facilitators.

“Watching a professor get something wrong and correct it reframes expertise as a practice rather than a performance.”

Bullfrog on a night field tripMuskrat at the Union Bay Natural AreaBullfrog on a night field tripGarter snakeTeaching with animal modelsTeaching propsStudent sketchBat diet worksheetTeaching as a tigerFrog dressStudent giftsStudent thank-you cardStudent giftsStudent sketch

Earlier years

Sharing frogs with local kidsField tripFieldworkNight surveyField Animal BehaviorClassroom outreach

Teaching history

Field Animal Behavior course poster

I started as a lecturer in the Department of Biology at UW in March 2020, teaching online due to COVID-19, and co-taught BIOL 417 with Dr. Karen Petersen.

From 2017–2018 I was a lecturer at UC Berkeley, teaching introductory biology labs. As a postdoctoral fellow and adjunct faculty at the University of Connecticut, I developed and taught an intensive summer course, Field Animal Behavior, taught a large lecture course, Biology of the Vertebrates, and served as faculty coordinator for Evolution writing seminars.

As a graduate student at UConn, I taught introductory biology labs for majors and non-majors and more specialized labs in Comparative Anatomy, Mammalogy, and Herpetology, and received an EEB graduate student teaching award.