Israel Borokini teaching portfolio

As a black man and a first-generation individual to graduate degree from a working-class Nigerian family, I have personally experienced the barriers to full, equal participation in science, and I am interested in helping to remove them. As a migrant graduate student in the United States, I endured culture shocks, steep learning curves, and financial challenges, while conducting my PhD dissertation on an unfamiliar species and ecosystem. In spite of these challenges, I successfully completed five dissertation chapters, which resulted in the discovery of new locations of the threatened species and increased the scientific understanding of the federally threatened species, the genus and their relationships with their habitats.
As an adjunct faculty at Truckee Meadows Community College (TMCC), Reno, Nevada, a Hispanic serving institution (HSI) and community college with over 50% student population from minority groups, I focused on building personal relationships with my students so I could understand and empathize with them. As a result, my students feel comfortable sharing with me their personal struggles including financial and health challenges, which impacts their academic performance, and for which I provided counseling and referral services. For example, a student of color told me, in tears, that she would drop the class because she recently lost her job; I helped her secure a student job on campus so she could continue her education. I also served on the TMCC’s Student Resources Committee, contributing to leadership and providing food pantry services and administering scholarships to financially challenged students. Furthermore, I implemented active learning approaches and learner-centered course designs and instructional delivery following the universal design for learning (UDL), to facilitate an inclusive learning experience for all students. I also offer flexible office hours, varied learning assessments, include a diversity statement in the syllabus of all courses I teach.
Despite the significant improvement in student gender and racial diversity across American college campuses, Blacks and Hispanics continue to experience the highest dropouts and largest college debt burdens; college enrolment is still low among Native American racial groups, and racial gaps and imbalances are prominent in STEM careers, especially among tenured college faculty positions. Additionally, despite comprising 17% of global population, Africa generates less than 1% of world’s research. I strongly believe in mentorship as a pathway to increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM careers. I offered internships to TMCC students, which guided career decisions and helped former interns to pursue academic careers in STEM. I have mentored several African students and peers, resulting in scientific publications and securing graduate admissions. I also contributed to K-12 mentoring with the NSF-funded Planting Science program, and offered several informal mentoring sessions with youths in the Pyramid Lake Paiute native American Tribe in Northern Nevada. Furthermore, I have made donations to enable scientists from underrepresented groups to attend scientific conferences, and spearheading institutional efforts (as the President of the Society for Conservation Biology [SCB] in Africa) to provide free conference registrations for members of underrepresented groups. Further, SCB Africa Section, under my current leadership, is developing an education program to provide long-term capacity building for early career African scientists in conservation science, policy, and management.
I also promote DEI issues in my research. In addition to the research internships, I also co-authored two papers addressing decolonization of ethnomedicinal research studies and institutions, as well as increasing the engagement of local African experts in global collaborative research work. Furthermore, my pre-doctoral research work involved engaging with faith-based communities in West Africa to document and preserve their traditional ecological and ethnomedicinal knowledge (for example, see: https://www.aaas.org/programs/dialogue-science-ethics-and-religion/profiles-science-engagement-faith-communities).
As a college faculty, I will be strategically positioned to motivate, inspire, and mentor members of the underrepresented groups, especially the Blacks to seek STEM careers. I will volunteer and contribute leadership in institutional groups that address DEI issues on campus, and facilitate diversity in my research laboratory by hiring, mentoring and advising undergraduate and graduate students and postdocs from diverse cultural, ethnic, racial, and sexual orientation backgrounds. I also look forward to leveraging my experience and cultural identity to engage in community outreach programs to K-12 schools for urban kids who tend to have a lack of connection to nature, due to gaps in formal education and lack of family activities in the outdoors.