Congratulations to the 2025 recipients of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Graduate Student Teaching Awards: Sylvia Kennerly, Marie Kerns, Natalie Lakanen, Keyan Li, Rohan Myers, and Dario Nunez.
The Chemistry and Biochemistry Graduate Student Teaching Awards for Excellence in the Teaching of Chemistry were established in 2013 to honor our graduate students’ important contributions to the instructional mission of the Department.
Award recipients are nominated by the faculty with whom they have worked during the past academic year and recognizes graduate student educators that have greatly exceeded the normal expectations of a Teaching Assistant.
We asked this year’s awardees to share a few words about their teaching experience and what inspires them.
Sylvia Kennerly
“Teaching is an act of creativity and empathy, seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. That shared perspective is what inspires me every time I talk to a student.”
“We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.” — Maria Mitchell, Astronomer
Marie Kerns
“One of the things I love most about teaching is students asking me questions in new ways that I’ve never thought of before, making me learn new things myself!”
Natalie Lakanen
“My favorite thing about teaching: Watching students experience how interesting science can be!”
Keyan Li
“It is an honor to receive this year’s teaching award alongside other outstanding graduate teaching fellows. Serving as the TA for the Chemical Biology course last fall was a particularly rewarding experience—witnessing students’ excitement and curiosity about the field’s current challenges and opportunities made it especially meaningful.”
Rohan Myers
“To me, science and teaching are fundamentally rooted in storytelling. Telling a great story that gets people to learn and gets people to care is the cornerstone of both fields. Because, at the end of the day, I believe the goal is not just to deliver information: it’s to do so in a way that helps someone understand the world and provides them with the desire to do something about it.”
Dario Nunez
“I always tell my students that by the time I grow old, I will have spent the majority of my life learning how to learn. Sharing this philosophy with them presents the idea that learning is a skill they continuously hone and adapt to fit a variety of different scenarios. This encourages them to not feel uncomfortable when confronting new problems or challenges, but to take agency in their learning so that they can progress towards a solution.”