The Iowa Stater
February 2002
Teachers, too
Nicola Pohl has been thinking about strategies for teaching chemistry ever since her freshman chemistry class at Harvard. She spent the next 13 years preparing for a career in academia. While completing her postdoc at Stanford, she even took art classes to become a better organic chemistry teacher."Organic chemistry relies far more on visual-spatial reasoning than on mathematical reasoning. I wanted to learn the pedagogical techniques that art teachers use to help students develop three-dimensional thinking," Pohl said. "I also wanted to remember the feeling of being in a class and not knowing anything about the subject. What do you have to learn to do it? I hope to bring that into my teaching."
Hui-Hsien Chou brings his experience as a computer scientist at Celera Genomics Corporation and The Institute for Genomic Research to the classroom. He developed a graduate-level course that re-creates the type of environment he encountered in those bona fide, large-scale genomic centers. Biology students use the bioinformatics software Chou collected from research centers and companies to complete projects involving vast amounts of data licensed from the genomics institute.
"We use the data as if the students had just obtained them from DNA sequencing machines," he said. "It's not a programming class though. It's more about learning how to use the software tools and becoming comfortable with them. I want to prepare our students with the confidence that comes from having developed a complex solution. Then they can face any potential challenge in their careers as plant scientists."
Adam Bogdanove said he teaches all the time. "To me that's what it's all about as a scientist. You're a teacher and a learner," he said. "Every time you write a paper, you are a teacher; every time you guide a student or technician in your lab on a new project, you are a teacher. To me, the essence of science is learning and teaching."
 Nicola Pohl studies how proteins make carbohydrate polymers, such as starch. Photo by Bob Elbert. |