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Keeping Up the Pace with Prof. Erin Vanderbunt
Posted August 9, 2022
By Pamela Williams
Dr. Erin Vanderbunt
Exercise Physiology
Exercise Physiology Assistant Professor Erin Vanderbunt keeps a brisk pace! As part of the Department of Applied Health faculty, Dr. Vanderbunt coaches students training for careers as empathetic medical professionals. Part of her coaching and instructional philosophy includes an emphasis on the importance of work/life balance.
Modeling empathy and professionalism, Prof. Vanderbunt maintains high academic standards for her students while also extending “grace through the weekend” for most assignments. Students have due dates they are encouraged to meet, but they have embedded flexibility, or grace, to submit assignments through Sunday evening. This grace period is automatically extended to students because Dr. Vanderbunt understands the competing priorities and busy schedules most students have. Even with the “grace through the weekend policy,” Prof. Vanderbunt says most students (approximately 75%) submit their work before the due date. Her students seem receptive and responsive to her advice that success–whether academic, professional, and personal–comes from actively prioritizing responsibilities and time management.
During the early days of emergency remote teaching during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Dr. Vanderbunt experimented with ways to prioritize and restructure her synchronous class meetings by “flipping” them. One of her favorite tools for social annotation and outlining the main ideas of readings is Diigo. By having students mark-up course content with comments and questions prior to attending the online class, Prof. Vanderbunt can use class time to demonstrate more complex ideas and to address questions identified by her students. Another great online resource Dr. Vanderbunt explored and then incorporated into her teaching is the Muscle and Motion application. This application provides students with realistic graphics and videos of the musculoskeletal system which is incredibly helpful for teaching and learning about human anatomy and physiology in a remote course.
Prof. Vanderbunt not only invests in her students, but also in her peers. During the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic, she participated in the SIUE Interdisciplinary Faculty Learning Communities and then went on to facilitate an affiliated group for non-tenure track faculty. Always a pacesetter, Dr. Vanderbunt is currently coordinating a department teaching group with a planned launch for Fall 2022.
