Faculty Spotlight: Elizabeth Owuor
Elizabeth Owuor, PhD formally joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette as an Instructor in August 2023. However, she has been serving as a temporary instructor here since 2015! Having taught for over 20 years across secondary, undergraduate and post-graduate levels, (both internationally and particularly in Australia and in the United States) her experiences and achievements have broaden her perspective and approach in the teaching-learning process and have sharpened her skills in handling different curricula and audiences having various expectations. Hence she engages in an interactive teaching style that is student-focused where she is no longer the single source of knowledge in the classroom but rather a facilitator of active and critical thinking by structuring her class time around discussions, frequently centred on problem-solving of challenging questions that demand student engagement and participation and frequently evaluate student-performance within class sessions which not only allows her the chance to immediately determine if learning has taken place, but also provide students with the opportunity to appreciate that critical thinking is a systematic process of engagement and re-engagement. Her overall teaching philosophy is grounded on making teaching and learning a lasting experience by providing each student with the greatest opportunities for academic growth, learning and career success, a duty she performs with great enthusiasm and rigour.
Dr. Owuor has experience in working for highly funded-grant projects such as Polymers for water and food security funded by BASF, Germany ($7 million) and CRC Polymers, Australia and in collaboration with the University of Western Australia (project period 2012 - 2017), with successful field trials at wheat production belts in Western Australia. She significantly contributed to the team that developed new soil wetting technologies licensed by BASF in 2016.
Her other research interests and capabilities include development of bio materials for drug delivery and the studies of biosynthetic pathways of glycosphingolipids from fungi.
Contact Dr. Owuor or learn more through these links:
Elizabeth Owuor's Chemistry Department web page
elizabeth.owuor@louisiana.edu