Office Hours: Dr. Terri Matiella

Dr. Terri Matiella is passionate about environmental science.

Dr. Terri Matiella has always enjoyed being outside. Growing up in San Angelo, Texas, she ran around catching frogs and picking plants. Now, she plays an important role in educating the next generation to appreciate the natural world and understand today’s environmental issues.

“One of the reasons that I find teaching rewarding is because I’m very passionate about the topic of environmental science,” she said. “I feel this is something that everyone should understand because even if you’re not an environmental scientist, you still affect the environment and impact it in your daily actions. I think once we understand how we impact the environment and how that happens, we can work together to make small changes that lead to big impacts.”

In Matiella’s Introduction to Environmental Science course, students take an eyeopening ecological footprint quiz that illustrates the individual impact they have on the earth’s resources.

“This level of awareness is something that everyone should be fluent in,” Matiella said. “It’s important to know where we are with how we treat the environment to be able to meet our own needs, provide for future generations, and work towards being a more sustainable society.” After earning her B.S. in biology and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in environmental science at UTSA, Matiella stayed to teach environmental science. She wanted to help develop the environmental science program, which was not yet a department.

In 2013, Matiella joined the department as a full-time faculty member and began to mold the curriculum into something she found interesting and engaging. She later began coordinating the department’s sections according to the curriculum she developed. Eventually, she realized she wanted to go back to school herself—this time in a new subject area.

“When you get a master’s or Ph.D., you’re taught to be really good at the thing you are doing,” she explained. “I was taught to be a really good scientist at this thing that I was studying, but I was never taught how to teach well.”

Matiella earned her Master of Education from UTSA last spring. That experience equipped her with the terminology and framework for what she was already successfully doing and introduced new pedagogical concepts she now implements in her courses. In addition to her instructional responsibilities, Matiella currently serves as the college’s interim dean for remote instruction. She is the cofounder of the new COS Honors Program and has held positions on the Core Curriculum Assessment Committee and the College of Sciences Dean’s Leadership Initiative on Student Success. In 2018, she was honored with the President’s Distinguished Achievement Award for Core Curriculum Teaching.

In September, Matiella was selected as a 2020-21 Advancing Next-Gen Faculty Leadership Fellow in recognition of her efforts to enhance curriculum and teaching practices across the university.

“As faculty, we always want to help our students succeed, and one of the ways I do that is by constantly looking for new activities, new techniques and new things to learn,” she said. “There is always more out there about teaching, education and ways we can get better at what we do. I think it’s a constantly evolving role.”

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