Professor Aarti Raja offers academic advice to students

By Bryce Johnson •

Aarti Raja, health desk adviser of The Current and professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, encourages students to explore new interests while they have the chance in college, which is how she developed her passion for teaching.

“It’s okay to try something and realize, oh, I don’t like this, I don’t want to do this the rest of my life. But that’s fine. You would’ve never known that if you didn’t try it,” Raja said. “And it’s better to try it when you are young and in college rather than you spend years doing something and then realize, oh, I don’t like this anymore.”

As NSU’s 2023 Professor of the Year, Raja is always looking for ways to help students, whether it’s through finding internships, conducting research in course-based undergraduate research experiences, or giving students opportunities to collaborate with other universities, like Harvard Medical School and MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where they can work with other researchers and physicians.

When she was a student, Raja found it helpful to always have a mentor.

“As a faculty member, I still rely on mentors. I have mentors. I lean on them often, get their advice. So I think, as a student, it’s important to kind of find yourself that mentor, find that faculty member. You have an interest in their work, talk to them,” Raja said. “It can be a peer, another student, as well.”

With the help of mentors, students can figure out which courses they want to take, and what they want their career path to take.

“My suggestion is that, to students, to try and define for yourself what it is that you want to do. And if you don’t know what you want to do, figure out what your interests are and take courses that are in your field of interest,” Raja said.

As a mentor to several students, Raja encourages them to keep asking questions, because even as a professor, it helps her learn new things.

“I like that sense of curiosity that students have when they come with questions. It’s nice to hear the other perspective. I’m used to thinking of things a certain way, but then I’ll get a student in the classroom ask me a question. I’ve never thought of it their way, and I think that’s interesting,” Raja said.