“Amazing teacher, he is very passionate at what he teaches and loves teaching others. He is very well organized and makes sure that every kid has the ability to not just pass but really learn the material.”
I truly enjoy teaching and my passion for biology is likely my greatest asset in the classroom. The overarching goals in my courses are to: 1) foster a spirit of curiosity and engagement in students so that they are empowered to ask informed questions; and 2) provide students with a conceptual background and problem solving framework necessary to tackle their own questions. To achieve these fundamental goals, I strive to employ active-learning and inquiry-based approaches within a student-centered learning environment. My main teaching responsibilities at Loyola are Genetics (BIOL 282) in the fall and Evolutionary Medicine (BIOL 395W) in the spring.
My Genetics course is a "flipped classroom". This course typically has 50 students per section. Short video modules are posted online that provide students with a traditional lecture-style overview of the content that students can watch at home. In class there are no formal lectures. Rather students work in teams on problem sets and other active-learning assignments.
Evolutionary Medicine is a small writing intensive course that explores human biology and disease through the lens of evolution. We explore topics such as human evolution, life history tradeoffs, the evolution of aging, antibiotic resistance, the evolution of cancer, parent-offspring conflict, evolutionary mismatch, and zoonotic disease spillover. This class is almost exclusively student-led discussions that are based on readings from the primary scientific literature. Students also spend a considerable amount of time writing and revising a research paper on a topic of their choosing.
“Dr. Grillo is tough! In a good way, but he definitely challenges you and doesn’t just let you skate by with half answers. I really liked that he would push us when we asked questions and he expected such a high level of writing and discussion that at first was really daunting, but toward the end of class it was nice to be able to understand difficult papers and write in a more scientific way as well as be able to articulate certain evolutionary mechanisms in a way that I couldn’t before this class.” -Evolutionary Medicine student