Brooks Pond, a professor in ETSU’s Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, was awarded the distinguished faculty award for teaching.
Pond is a Kingsport native who has a strong passion for teaching. She earned her doctorate at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, where she first gained teaching experience.
Pond recalls extensively preparing to lecture, but changing tactics last minute.
“I literately just gave them a really good talk,” said Pond. “I didn’t really see at that point the difference between teaching and presenting. It really kind of drove home that teaching is not just telling. It’s not just a one-way thing. So, I really thought about, okay, this had got to be a cooperative thing. This has got to be a partnership. I’ve got to read them and interact with them. It can’t be a one-way exchange.”
Following her graduation from Duke University, Pond began her postdoctoral fellowship at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where she studied developmental neurobiology.
“My boss was very supportive of my career ambitions and wanting to pursue a teaching career,” said Pond. “He allowed me to essentially take a part-time job at a community college where I taught anatomy and physiology in the evenings. Its quite a busy schedule because I was in lab all day and then teaching at night.”
Throughout her teaching career, Pond experienced diversity in backgrounds as well as education.
Before her time at the Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy began in 2007, she started to explore more active learning strategies.
“So, I had all different kind of levels and backgrounds,” said Pond. “So that was really helpful, I think, in terms of realizing how to reach all different students, keep the strong students engaged and excited and yet also, like, not lose some of the students that found it more challenging.”
From the beginning of her career, Pond has grown and found new interactive ways to teach and mentor her students.
In August 2020, Pond was presented the distinguished faculty award for teaching.
“It’s the pinnacle,” Pond said. “It has just been amazing. I am overwhelmed, very humbled to be one of the faculty that has been recognized in this way.”
