By Cassandra Hendry
Claudia Buttera’s classroom is a bit different than one might expect at a university.
Instead of a large lecture hall, her teaching domain takes place among microscopes, chemicals and plants. And she couldn’t be happier about that.
Buttera is a lab co-ordinator with the biology department and a newly minted award-winning educator. She was one of three Carleton winners of the 2014 Capital Educators’ Awards, selected from a pool of 65 finalists.
“It was humbling and exciting to be appreciated and recognized for the contributions that people like myself make to the education of students,” she says.
As a lab co-ordinator, Buttera works with undergraduate and graduate students and is responsible for preparing the technical side of classwork, designing new experiments, and instructing students on how to use the equipment and materials. She also trains and supervises teaching assistants to help students in the lab.
Despite not having to teach a large classroom full of students like others in her department, her work is far from easy.
“Some of us run seven labs a week, with up to 65-70 students in each one,” she says, adding that she’s in the lab “all the time.”
Buttera is responsible for co-ordinating two biology courses: plant form and function and plant physiology and biochemistry. One of her greatest challenges, she says, is keeping her students engaged in material they might not find intriguing right off the bat.
“That’s a really big challenge in general, but in my courses in particular because not a lot of students are excited about plant cells. They want to learn about animals,” Buttera says. “I really make an effort to make things exciting by introducing plants into the lab that they might be familiar with or they would relate to, or one that has some exciting, interesting element to it.”
Her work seems to be paying off. In an award nomination one former student wrote that “[Buttera] creates a passion and excitement in students and can light a spark in an individual that can be harnessed for years to come.”
To Buttera, it all comes down to helping her students who never realized the rewards that plant biology can offer.
“For the students who come in not wanting to be there, when they get excited about coming to the next lab and they’re engaged and asking questions, that’s great.”