Prior to Dr. Kling's Ph.D. training, his interests in teaching extends back to his tenure as an undergraduate/graduate anatomy teaching assistant (TA) and as an anatomy faculty member in the Biomedical Sciences Department at Missouri State University. As a TA, his initial roles included performing cadaver prosections and demonstrations in a regionally taught anatomy course. During this time, he gave regionally taught gross anatomy lectures to undergraduate and graduate anatomy students. As a faculty member, he took on roles that included serving as a revolving course director for undergraduate anatomy, interim-graduate anatomy director, undergraduate and graduate lab director and gross anatomy lab and lecture instructor for physician’s assistant, physical therapy and nurse anesthesia students. These experiences prepared him to take on leadership responsibilities that include curricular design, development and implementation of course objectives, devising and delivering written and practical assessments and course evaluations. At Missouri State, he co-chaired the Community Outreach Committee and organized the Emergency Medicine Skills workshop for St. John’s hospital emergency room physicians and nurses, paramedics, EMTs and flight paramedics.
 
When he matriculated into the teaching track Ph.D. program at UNMC, the anatomical science courses were transitioning from a traditional standalone format to integrating the basic and clinical sciences into a systems-based approach. Here, he gave lectures that adopted a case-based approach designed to demonstrate how a deep understanding of anatomical relationships can be used to critically reason and navigate through anatomy-based clinical problems. These lectures include active learning exercises and have integrated neuroanatomy and embryology to support the underlying theme of the case. As an instructor in the gross anatomy lab and facilitator of clinical small group sessions, he encouraged teamwork and effective communication by creating an atmosphere open to asking questions and consensus building in order to collectively problem solve questions that I’ve posed on clinical cases or dissection objectives.
 
As the neuroanatomy lab co-director for Masters of Medical anatomy students at UNMC, he embraced a multimodal pedagogical approach by implementing eModules that integrated the lab manual with interactive neuroanatomy images accompanied by clinically oriented cerebral arteriograms and MRIs. The eModules were designed to accommodate multiple learning styles and functioned to foster teambuilding in lab or serve as a student-paced learning tool outside of class. In recognition of his teaching efforts at UNMC, he was awarded the UNMC Student Senate Student Impact Award for the College of Graduate Studies and the Robert and Anne Binhammer Outstanding Teaching Track PhD Student Award.
 
As a graduate research student at UNMC, his research goals involved elucidating how low oxygen conditions or hypoxia enhances aggressiveness in pediatric Ewing’s sarcoma tumors through the secretion of small extracellular vesicles known as exosomes. This research was funded by two $50,000 research grant awards from the Pediatric Cancer Research Group at UNMC.  His leadership opportunities involved mentoring summer research students, co-chairing the anatomy experience at UNMC for undergraduates selected to the Summer Health Professions Education Program, and organizing the annual Genetics, Cell Biology and Anatomy Department Student Research Forum as the departmental student representative. Participation in teaching, research and service has led to the UNMC Graduate Studies Fellowship, Excellent Graduate Student Award, UNMC Student Senate Student Impact Award for the College of Graduate Studies and University of Nebraska Presidential Graduate Student Award.