Julia Johnson, PhD, joined the Teaching Center in September 2017 as Assistant Director of Educational Development. Julia earned her PhD in Chemistry with a Certificate in College Teaching from Duke University in May 2017.

As an Assistant Director, Julia collaborates with her colleagues at The Teaching Center to develop, implement, and evaluate  programming for graduate students, postdoctoral appointees, and faculty, including the WU-CIRTL program for future faculty in STEM.  This program has been developed in coordination with the 43-institution CIRTL network, with support from the National Science Foundation and the Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation. The mission of CIRTL (the Center for Integrating Research, Teaching, and Learning) is to improve undergraduate STEM education by training future faculty in evidence-based teaching.  Julia develops and facilitates the STEM Pedagogies workshops–an advanced-level workshop series open to graduate students and postdocs in STEM.

In addition to this advance-level workshop series, Julia also works closely with Denise Leonard with Teaching Center colleagues to develop and run the Foundations in Teaching workshop series, designed for graduate students who are teaching for the first time at Washington University.

Julia has developed Exploring Practices in the Classroom (EPIC) Learning Community a program to engage graduate students who are early in their careers at Washington University.  The focus of EPIC is to foster an interdisciplinary community of students interested in learning about and discussing pedagogy. The pilot of EPIC began in Spring of 2018. EPIC is supported through the CIRTL network.

Julia meets and consults with graduate students, postdoctoral appointees, and faculty from engineering, mathematics, physics, earth and planetary sciences, and chemistry on Teaching Center professional-development programs and teaching in the classroom.

Julia is the lead pedagogical consultant for faculty who are interested in using polling softwares (including the Washington University supported iClicker system) in their teaching. Through this work she trains faculty members in both technology and pedagogy to encourage the use of clickers to promote active learning and student engagement.

At Duke University, Julia’s research focus was on studying protein thermodynamic stabilities to identify protein biomarkers of aging and Parkinson’s disease in mice. Previously as a graduate student and teaching assistant, Julia worked closely with a team of instructors to evaluate, update and teach chemistry in active learning classrooms.

Julia has extensive experience in utilizing Team Based Learning (TBL) to teach general chemistry and biophysical chemistry. Julia also has experience advocating for, promoting, and supporting women and minorities in STEM fields through her tenure as the co-president of Duke’s graduate Women in Science and Engineering organization (WiSE).