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Abel Rosado is an Assistant Professor in Cell Biology in the Botany Department and holds a Canada Research Chair Tier 2 in Plant Cellular Dynamics. He has a BSc. in Chemistry, an MSc in Cancer Biochemistry and a PhD in Plant Molecular Biology from the University of Malaga (Spain). He also performed postdoctoral research at Purdue University (1 year) and UC-Riverside (5 years).
Throughout his scientific career, Abel have been awarded several international research fellowships including a Fulbright (USA), a Marie Curie (European Union), and a Ramon y Cajal (Spain) postdoctoral Fellowships. Abel’s research has been published in top-tier scientific journals and enabled him to join UBC as a Research Assistant Professor in 2014.
Over the past six years, Abel has taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses, and currently, Abel enjoys co-teaching the Fundamentals of Physiology (BIOL260) and the Plant Physiology and Development (BIOL352) courses.
What do you most enjoy about being an Instructor?
It is a great opportunity to share knowledge about something I am truly passionate about, and it also enables me to highlight the importance of plants for our daily lives. I enjoy transforming topics that are abstract or dense into bite-size examples that students can relate and apply. I also love interacting with students and seeing the change in their faces when they finally understand a complicated concept and say “it makes sense!”
How would you describe your teaching style?
It is a high-energy student-driven activity. My lectures are flexible and the delivery style changes on the spot based on the reaction of the students. I love creating cognitive dissonance with my clicker questions, making students active participants in their learning process, and mixing humour and pop-culture references to catch the students’ attention and avoid boredom (for them and for me). I never received formal training as an instructor so I often rely on students’ feedback and evaluations to shape my teaching style.
What is something that you are currently doing in your course(s) or in the UBC teaching and learning space that you are excited about?
I use the learning space and multiple probes to represent life size models of physiological processes (e.g. Z-scheme in photosynthesis or xylem-phloem transport). In these demos, different students represent the components of the system and their movements in the class space are coordinated to show how the processes work at the molecular/tissue levels.
What is a memorable anecdote from your own undergraduate experience?
In Spanish Universities marking can be brutal. I was one of the top students but my overall GPA ended up being below 3. I also failed one course multiple times: Third year Quantum mechanics with the “legendary” Dr. Arenas. I did not feel terrible though, 298 out of 303 students failed that course and the average was a meager 22%. It took me three additional attempts to get a pass and I celebrated it more than the completion of my degree.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
Answering Piazza! (Not)… I enjoy long bike rides, and I love scuba-diving. My top three also includes a classic: binge-watching Breaking bad or Narcos on a rainy day.
What is a fun fact about you that people may not know?
In Mexico, my father in law “forced” me to ride a bull before asking my wife for marriage. In the process, I broke my left hand in several places. It was a small village without doctors so a traditional healer tried to fix my hand using some herbs and magic spells (it did not work great but I appreciate the use of botanicals in traditional medicine). Somehow, my hand is now fine and I am happily married.