Teaching in focus: Andrés Varhola

Name:

Andrés Varhola

Title:

Assistant Professor of Teaching

Faculty/Department/Unit:

Forestry / Forest Resources Management

Location:

Vancouver

Year I started working at UBC:

2008

What first motivated you to become an educator?

I have loved teaching for a long time, starting as a high school student tutoring my peers innately. Learning with passion when my own teachers were passionate, my earliest inspiration came from extraordinary high school educators. Training crews of forestry workers in the industry then evolved into a teaching career in university, where I am delighted to foster knowledge and skills for the competitive field of forest management and natural resources.

Tell us more about your work.

I have taught a wide range of courses in Forestry, Earth Sciences, Statistics, Computer Applications, Business and Professional Development. From Jump Start workshops before students’ very first day in university to a fourth-year specialized forestry capstone, or from 101 introductory courses to guest lectures at the graduate level, I love transmitting to a diverse group of students not only hard-core subject matters, but also the soft skills they will require to succeed in life.

What inspired your particular approach to teaching?

I love to have fun while doing anything, so why would teaching and learning be different? Humour is a very important aspect of my instruction style, which may feature subtle sentences in my syllabi to evoke a quick chuckle, somewhat sophisticated content-related jokes, self-deprecating satire delivered spontaneously in class, or hilarious laugh tracks in pre-recorded video lectures.  Getting educated must be effective, and entertaining humour will help with comprehension and retention!

What have you learned while teaching that has surprised you the most?

How important it is for learning to have a good student-teacher interaction. The human connection is so crucial that computers, virtual reality or bots will never fully replace flesh-and-bone teachers like us. I fostered excellent relationships with my professors when I was an undergraduate student, which have remained fruitful to this day. As a teacher now, I highly enjoy when students ask questions in class, come to office hours, and communicate effectively.

What impact do you hope to have on your students?

First, inspire them to be curious critical thinkers that question everything and know how to learn independently. Second, facilitate turning those “aha moments” arising from their academic experiences in university into effective life-long skills and timeless wisdom. If my students shine on a job interview, get a professional designation certificate, become champions of societal improvement or develop a revolutionary world-changing idea, I hope to have contributed with a worthy grain of sand that they remember!

Are there any colleagues or mentors you’d like to acknowledge and why?

My aunt Adriena Varhola founded a high school, Liceo Internacional in Ecuador, which became top-tier in Latin America. There, my teachers Nelly Hinojosa and Diego Carrion sparked my passion for education, later fuelled in my Forest Engineering undergrad at Universidad Austral de Chile by remarkable professors such as Renato Grez, Victor Gerding and Fernando Droppelmann, just to name a few. Nicholas Coops, Younes Alila, Suzie Lavallee, and Jeanine Rhemtulla have been my primary talented mentors at UBC.

Learn more:

https://forestry.ubc.ca/faculty-profile/andres-varhola 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/avarhola 
https://www.amazon.ca/stores/author/B07H1PB9XG/about