Scientists as Teachers

by
Karen Young Kreeger

SO YOU LOVE to teach. Now that the school year is in full
swing, are you wondering how you can contribute more to the
next generation, keep your interest in teach ing alive and
well, or enhance the peda gogical portion of your resume?
“Scientists need to share the wealth of their knowledge and
their perspective of the way the world works,” says Bassam
Shakhashiri, a professor of chemistry at the University of
Wisconsin, Madison. For 30 years he has been taking his love
and enthusiasm for science to the public via lectures and
demonstrations; television and radio shows; and now the Web,
among other venues. Shakhashiri and others cite a long list
of ways that researchers can reach out: giving talks to community
groups, working with students and teachers in local schools
and museums, interacting with reporters and legislators, and
serving on school boards, to name a few.

Some investigators have even opted to leave the bench and
teach in high school science classrooms. A recent report by
the National Academy of Sciences, “Attracting Science and
Mathematics Ph.D.s to Secondary School Education,” (National
Academy Press, 2000) explores this very subject. In fact,
middle school and high school are the most important times
in which to catch and keep a child’s interest in science.
This is the age at which negative attitudes toward science
start to creep into the psyche, warns Shakhashiri. And, he
adds, scientists can play an important role in helping to
stem this tide of negativity by volunteering in the classroom,
running workshops for teachers, developing curricula, or teaching
kids themselves.

These activities are not limited to those in academia; researchers
in government and industry also participate in such outreach
programs. Another group of scientists seek more teaching experience
to make themselves more competitive in today’s tight job market,
as well as to sustain their love of teaching. Some hold teaching
postdocs, while others are adjunct professors or team-teach
classes at nearby institutions.

Teaching
Postdocs

For newly minted Ph.D.s who want to gain more classroom hours,
a number of relatively new and uncommon positions called teaching
postdoctoral fellowships have been created. Brian Coppola,
associate professor of chemistry at the University of Michigan,
says that the teaching postdoc concept has been around for
a while. Some formal programs in chemistry are available,
especially for Ph.D.s interested in teaching at institutions
with a strong tradition of undergraduate research.

At Michigan, Coppola has worked with two teaching postdocs.
During their first semester, the postdocs were instructors
in training, much like teaching assistants but with more responsibility.
During the second term they implemented what they had learned,
and during the summer session they were fully responsible
for teaching a course. Both postdocs were recommended by their
research directors – they had no teaching experience and wanted
to go into academia, but they needed the year of teaching
to be competitive.

Gordon E. Uno, chairman of the department of botany and microbiology
at the University of Oklahoma, just created two teaching postdocs,
which are funded in part by his department. “These will provide
young Ph.D.s the opportunity to teach their own classes during
their transition to faculty positions.”

Brad Elder, one of the teaching postdocs in Uno’s department,
says that this two-year position “will help me be more competitive
in the job market for the four-year private undergraduate
institutions I will be applying to.” In this postdoc he’s
teaching an introductory botany class and integrating computers
into the class’s lab. Elder also was a teaching assistant
while working on his Ph.D. He has taught at the Konza Prairie
Biological Station near Manhattan, Kan., and has tutored Boy
Scouts seeking mammalogy, astronomy, and herpetology merit
badges.

Tamara Marsh, the other postdoc in Uno’s department, is teaching
the first introductory microbiology lab for majors and updating
and overhauling the class’s lab. “I knew as an undergrad that
I wanted to teach science at a higher education level, so
I knew what I needed as far as experience was concerned.”
She also hopes that this teaching postdoc will make her more
competitive in the job market.

The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, offers a postdoctoral
training program called Seeding Postdoctoral Innovators in
Research and Education, or SPIRE for short. SPIRE offers postdoctoral
fellows training in basic scientific research, as well as
hands-on teaching experience and other professional skills.
Each fellowship takes a minimum of three years. Postdocs perform
bench research during the first two years and attend workshops
and seminars on science education. During the third year,
each fellow teaches a core biology course to undergraduate
students at one of seven smaller, teaching-intensive universities
in North Carolina.

The National Institutes of Health also supports a teaching
postdoc through the National Institute for General Medical
Sciences (NIGMS). Major research universities that are partnered
with minority-serving institutions are eligible. Postdocs
hold regular research positions but also teach at the minority-serving
institutions. These Institutional Research and Academic Career
Development Awards are described in the minority programs
section of the NIGMS Web site.

Connie Noguchi, dean of the NIH graduate school, says that
many scientists teach for NIH’s Foundation for Advanced Education.
The foundation is looking particularly for younger scientists
to participate in the instruction of classes held there. NIH
invites postdocs to organize courses, especially in new techniques
such as microarraying.

Out
in the Community

Plenty of opportunities exist for scientists to get out and
shout about their love of science to kids and the public at
large, says Andrea D. Wolfe, an assistant professor in the
department of evolution, ecology, and organismal biology at
Ohio State University. In fact, she put together a symposium
for last month’s meeting of the Botanical Society of America
titled “Scientific Outreach for the Next Millennium” to share
her experiences with her colleagues.

“I have kids, so it’s easy to get involved,” explains Wolfe.
“Teachers are always looking for volunteers, and once they
find out you’re a scientist, especially a natural scientist,
you’ve got an in. They’ll find a way to weave you into their
classwork.”

One of Wolfe’s favorite educational projects was her monthlong
daily E-mail correspondence with her son’s fourth grade class
last fall. While she was doing fieldwork in South Africa on
the country’s botanical biodiversity, she E-mailed reports
on what she and her grad students were finding and sent digital
images of the landscape. It eventually became a schoolwide
project, with notebooks of E-mail and image printouts passed
around for all to read. “I think it had a big impact on the
students and the teachers,” she recalls. “It put a human face
on doing science.”

Wolfe also volunteers with scout groups, at day camps (where
she also gets her grad students involved), and at garden and
plant enthusiast clubs. Echoing Shakhashiri, Wolfe says, “It’s
a matter of taking the time to get involved, and in schools
the main theme is to catch [the students] young.”

Irene Eckstrand, a health science administrator at NIGMS,
has always been interested in education, but her job as a
grant administrator doesn’t directly include educational activities.
She began to “get involved” in the late 1980s when she put
together a program to get NIH scientists involved in the local
schools. Now the focus of her efforts is advising the Montgomery
County, Maryland public school system on revising its science
curriculum. In the same vein, she is joint chair of the education
committee of the Society for the Study of Evolution and the
Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. She also speaks
about science and evolution to such community gatherings as
church groups, retirement homes, and teacher groups.

Francis Waller, a senior research associate at Air Products
and Chemicals Inc. in Allentown, Pa., is a good example of
a scientist who has rolled up his sleeves and entered the
classroom enthusiastically. For eight years he’s been demystifying
science for elementary school students in classroom demonstrations
of simple chemistry principles and helping teachers develop
units on such subjects as electricity and magnetism.

He also serves as a mentor during a 10-week summer intern
program at Air Products for college and high school students.
At the graduate level, he team-teaches a class on organic
synthesis and teaches both a two-credit course on the organic
chemical industry and a three-credit course on polymer science,
all at Lehigh University, where he’s an adjunct professor.
He’s also an instructor for internal classes for Air Products
employees. In addition to passing on his enthusiasm for his
discipline, Waller says that teaching keeps him on top of
his field: “You don’t realize how much there is to know about
chemistry until you have to explain it to others, especially
if it’s something you’ve done all of your life.”

Eckstrand and others say that finding the right kind of teaching
fit depends on your goals. If your goal is to teach full time,
consider going back to the classroom, as the recent NAS report
suggests. If you want to be involved for your own interest
and enjoyment, then speaking to community groups is a good
idea. But if your goal is to make a difference in educating
the next generation, you might want to get involved in your
school system by serving on the school board or participating
in teacher training workshops. If your interests are at the
university level, you can help train K-12 education majors.
And, if your passion for education takes a more national scope,
you might consider opportunities with professional societies.