Interview with Dr Ling
Dr Gee Chong Ling
I am Gee, one of your education focussed lecturers within the School of BABS. My core discipline is Microbiology (or a self-proclaimed Microbiologist), with vast experience teaching into many courses in BABS on Biochemistry, Genetics, Molecular Biology and Cell Biology. I am a convenor or co-convenor for a few BABS courses including MICR2011, BABS2202, BABS3021/MICR3621, BIOC3261 and HCEM1829 throughout the calendar year. I am a dedicated person focusing heavily on technological driven learning support, as many of you have found that Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) creeps into nearly all BABS courses after a few years of implementation. I am a person that sees learning as a ‘progress’, not an ‘event’ in your life.
Similar to many of you, I am a home grown academic, going through BABS education system in the late 2010, then starting to exert myself in the teaching space as a demonstrator when I pursue my PhD. I reflect on my own experience as a student in BABS, when I became a demonstrator, I experimented a few new initiatives to make sure I satisfied the learning requirements I yearned for when I was a student. I asked myself, did students walk out of my class getting the message that we tried so hard to deliver, and here comes your pre-lab quizzes in the early stage. After pursuing a teaching award in 2012 (and successful), I continue to expand my teaching into many other courses. In 2017, I joined UNSW Pro Vice Chancellor Unit as an education developer, learning much more of the education systems and hierarchy within the university before I returned to the School in 2018 as a technical officer, where my sole responsibility shifted towards laboratory teaching. I continued to experimented on BABS students with a huge number of digital technologies that boosted the BABS technical team to a Program Design Teaching Excellence Award which allowed myself to now be working with you all as your lecturer.
The decision to be an education-focussed lecturer seems straight forward to me, as I strived for more opportunity to be able to work with our students in developing individuals during your learning journey. With my new role, I am best position to do exactly what I set out to do in the very beginning of my experience as an educator – to experiment on students a.k.a. to identify the best approach to assist in students’ learning journey and personal development in one of their major milestone in life.
Advice to my younger self? I am not a person that regret a particular decision, rather a person who reflect on every decision made and attempt to make a better decision if I could knowing that I wouldn’t be able to do that without my prior experience. So, I have to salute the bravery of my younger self for taking every steps in the past. If I have to give one, then it would probably be – never shy away from a challenge or be brave in tackling any difficult challenge in life.
My advice for students aspiring to go into research is to find the real meaning in your goal when it comes to research, you should try to develop a vision which will drive your effort and getting through every hurdles in your way. There is no need to go down a dark tunnel or venturing into a very difficult challenge, be aware that every single small steps in research is a achievement towards a greater vision. As long as you stay true to your vision, you will find ‘fun’ along your JOURNEY.