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And they're off!
NARRATOR: It's a day at the races, insect style.
STEPHEN: Today we are doing an event for FFA,
so we have a coachroach race going on.
EVENT SOUNDS: Little Red is now on the right track,
Rainbow Roach is in the lead.
STEPHEN: So we teach them the differences between
the cockroaches and we teach them where they
are naturally from, how many years can they live,
things like that.
NARRATOR: Cockroach racing is just one of the
innovative ways University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Professor Tiffany Heng-Moss gets students revved up
about science.
TIFFANY: So they're doing a cockroach tractor pull
and while they're cheering on for which color
cockroach is going to ultimately win the race,
they're also learning some fundamental information
about the insect's exoskeleton, very different from
humans in which we possess and internal skeleton.
They're also learning a little bit about how this
exoskeleton give that insect an advantage.
EVENT: Hurrah!
TIFFANY: We really want to focus on having a
student-centered classroom versus instructor-
centered. So every opportunity we have, we want to
be engaging those students and we want those
students to be having the opportunity to discover
things first-hand.
RONNIE GREEN: She is the real deal when it comes
to engaging students and learning in the life sciences.
JENNY: She is always there for her students, she
goes above and beyond. She's great. She's one of
the best professors.
GINNY: She knows everybody's name, first and last,
where they came from, what their major is, what
they want to do with their life.
I try to learn every student in my classes names.
And that was a goal I had when I first started and I
thought it was very important to show the students that
I cared about them on an individual level.
And this is becoming increasingly more important
as enrollments have increased.
So when I first started ten years ago, I was at 20
students in my class.
So now I'm over 100 students in those lecture halls.
ANDY: Right away just having somebody know your
name just makes you feel so much more
important in the class.
NARRATOR: As part of her hands-on teaching style,
Heng-Moss requires every student to keep an
insect as a pet for the semester.
And it's funny because over the years I have developed
an allergic reaction to Madagascar hissing cockroaches.
And this is one of the pets that I make my students
take home. And so have to still get the hissing
cockroach out and hold the hissing cockroach.
But then I go home and the next day I'm in misery
because my eyes have swollen shut, my lips, my
hands have a rash all over them.
And my doctor says, 'why don't you just wear gloves
when you're getting out the hissing cockroaches' and
yea then I'm gonna get 100 students to take
these things home!
RONNIE GREEN: One of the really unique things
about Dr. Heng-Moss is that as a young faculty
member, we can see in her the ability she had that
she became a mentor for senior faculty, where she
has senior faculty coming to her and saying
'how can I enhance my educational effectiveness, how
can I enhance what I do with students." That just is
a testament to her ability as a creative instructor and
is one of our leading educators at the
University of Nebraska.
I don't know how she does everything.
I think she's superwoman.
Like she does everything all day long, goes home
and she has two beautiful children and then
I think she fights crime at night.
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