2018 Metcalf Award Recipient: Elizabeth Co

A Senior Lecturer in the Boston University Department of Biology, Elizabeth Co is recognized as a talented educator and an advocate for using technology in the classroom to improve learning outcomes.

She has transformed the lecture hall into a beehive of engagement and discussion through her use of innovative technology in presentation and class participation and raised the quality of office hours by providing students immediate feedback on exams. Colleagues frequently seek her advice on the use of technology to improve their own courses. She brings a scientist’s acuity and methodology to her own teaching methods, constantly refining her classroom technique in order to promote her students’ intellectual curiosity, absorption of material, and self-awareness of preferred learning style.

Her areas of interest include science education, human immunology, and reproduction. She often teaches large introductory classes for freshmen and sophomores—courses not known for glowing student evaluations. For this reason, her consistently outstanding reviews are all the more remarkable.

Students describe a “knowledgeable,” “enthusiastic” instructor who is “very good at explaining difficult and confusing topics” and makes students “passionate about learning.” They especially appreciate her use of “personal stories and real-life examples” that “deepen understanding of topics.”

In the words of her nominator, “she furthers the mission of a research university by creating students who are able and empowered to lead many fields of research and healthcare for years to come.”

Elizabeth Co holds a Bachelor of Arts, with high honors, in Biology and Education from Mount Holyoke College and a Doctorate in Biomedical Sciences from University of California, San Francisco. She joined Boston University in 2012 after teaching at University of California, Berkeley, and University of California, San Francisco.