Faculty spotlight: Brain synapses fire in this award-winning teacher’s classroom

August 13, 2025
Erin Clabough sitting on a table in a science classroom holding two halves of a model human brain

Neuroscientist Erin Clabough often teaches her classes perched atop her desk in Gilmer Hall. She thinks people would be surprised that “a lot of things that we think of as our static character traits actually are learned behaviors. Because of that, we can change a lot about ourselves that we think of as unchangeable, like how much empathy we have, or how creative we are or how much self-control we have.” (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)

Erin Clabough was heading east on Virginia’s Interstate 64 Monday just after noon when she picked up her phone.

She was in the passenger seat of her blue Jeep Cherokee, heading to Virginia Beach for the day with her daughters Avery and Elsa. In the back were three beach chairs, three towels, an umbrella and a surfboard.

Erin Clabough hiking a forest trail

Clabough is from Virginia Beach and loves the ocean. She said she’s learned to love the mountains in Central Virginia. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)

Clabough, a neuroscientist at the University of Virginia, is from Virginia Beach. The ocean has always centered her. “I think it makes me feel connected to something that’s bigger than me,” she said.

In the last two years, the professor of psychology earned her 500-hour yoga teacher and Reiki master teacher certifications. During the pandemic, Clabough also deepened her meditation practice. “I think a lot of people started doing some deep-dive stuff into ‘Why are things the way they are? Is this how I want them to be? Is this who I want to be?’” she said. “I was no exception to that.”

It helped her be a better parent to her four children, and also to teach at UVA, where she has led classes since 2018.

Meditation, optional

At the end of the pandemic, Clabough decided – based on her experience and studies on the benefits of mindfulness – to introduce the option of meditation in her neural basis of behavior course. Ninety percent of the class took on the assignment, and 88% reported benefits in lowering stress and anxiety levels.

In an anonymous, follow-up survey, students wrote:

I honestly loved my time of meditation each day. I took time to focus on the good in others & also uplift myself.

It was a fantastic experience and helped me get through a very rough first semester. It helped me to keep loving myself when I did not feel I had a place on campus.

In this class, I felt that my well-being as a student presently and for the future was prioritized. I learned an invaluable skill that I will take with me throughout my life, and truly, I could not be more grateful.

The University recently recognized Clabough’s teaching skills with one of its highest faculty awards, the All-University Teaching Award. 

Among the nominators was her student Boris Nakashyan. “She’s definitely a type of professor that is not the biggest fan of traditional, boring, ‘You come in and get lectured for 50 minutes,’ type of presentation,” he said.

Nakashyan was in his first semester in 2022 when she made him an unbelievable offer. “I told her I like to design and create escape rooms, a hobby I started during COVID because I had nothing else to do,” he explained. She invited him to design some puzzles, liked them, and asked Nakashyan to show her teaching assistants how they worked.

Get ready for the ride — shop the Team Store.
Get ready for the ride — shop the Team Store.

“We piloted an escape room in her 300-person class,” he said. “I was just blown away by the fact that as a first-year (student), I had the opportunity to conduct my own independent research on the topic that I was interested in, which resulted in a publication and multiple conferences that I presented at,” he said incredulously. “I truly could not have imagined.”

Returning to Charlottesville

During the Claboughs’ drive home from the shore Monday evening, the professor felt reset. About 20 dolphins swam right off a sandbar the whole time she, Avery and Elsa were at the beach. 

“The three of us swam out to them,” Clabough recalled. “When we put our heads underwater, we could hear their clicks and whistles.” 

She said they also took a “quick surf in some crumbly waves,” gentle, soft-breaking swells whose crests spilled and crumbled smoothly down the face of the breakers.

“On the way back, I reworked my Psych 2200 syllabus while my daughters drove,” she said, speaking of the course Nakashyan took in 2022. At that time, they had covered the neural basis of learning late in the semester. “I moved the information about synaptic plasticity to the beginning of the course, so students better understand exactly how they are learning in the class with repeated exposure,” she said.

Synaptic plasticity is the process of changing the connections between neurons in the brain to make information flow more easily in neural pathways. 

“It’s how we change our own neural architecture,” she said. “We can do this through repeated practice of skills we want to get better at, like memorizing facts about the brain or learning how to ride a bike.”

Clabough stresses that her students can always change. It’s the same lesson she learned retooling her parenting and teaching skills. 

“This is also how we change behavioral patterns that aren’t serving us well and how we grow as humans in a much broader sense,” she said. “The key to brain change of any sort is small, deliberate, spaced-out practice.”

Media Contact

Jane Kelly

University News Senior Associate Office of University Communications

Article Information

September 23, 2025

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