My recent professional reflection has revolved around the fact that before last Thursday I’d never heard of the seven principles of good practice in undergraduate education.  Really, the principles are fairly obvious when you read them, e.g. contact between students and faculty and prompt feedback, but I think what is more obvious is that these things  do need to be stated.  The university is struggling for relevance in a time when education is becoming more self-motivated.  The burden of learning about learning is not just on the side of the faculty; the pupil too needs acquaintance with these fundamental principles.  The crux of my reflection has been disappointment.  Disappointment in my education as it was presented to me.  Then, trailing behind, a greater disappointment in my own, self-motivated learning.

First, the facets of disappointment in my education.  I dug back into my attic footlockers to my undergraduate guides and catalogs.  I spent a lot of time over the the weekend pouring through them, and nowhere is there mention of any ‘principles’ of education.  In a couple spots are the same copy-pasted lines, something along the lines of “go to X study center if your grades are bad.”  Reactive and remedial.

At the time immediately after finishing my Ph.D. I felt more of a relief than an accomplishment.  This is a sinister way for any Ph.D. holder to look at his time in grad school.  After getting out of that haze I remembered, “hey I finally have that credential I need, to do what I love: teach science! [to undergrads]“  Notice I didn’t say training.  Yes, I received some excellent training in becoming a scientific technician (and a fiscal administrator), but my desire to teach had to be kept secret, shelved for five years.

You will often find other scientists saying, “you have no business getting a Ph.D. in science if you want to teach.”  They are short sighted, and I’d put money on most of the same people agreeing that the majority of our biology professors are lousy at the professing part.   So lousy that the idea of educating another human being about the field is frowned upon; so lousy that not once was any principle of good education ever espoused during my graduate school years.  They can’t teach their own lunches out of a brown paper bag.

I sincerely believe that by the end of the 1990′s in biomedical sciences we entered an extended nadir of respect for education.  Despite being nonprofit, research institutions are greedy entities (see the Chicago Guide to your Academic Career); but we might have started coming out of this low in biology, because of a call to action in 2003 named Bio2010.

This leads into the disappointment in myself as an educator, because I had no idea Bio2010 existed until yesterday.  My gut was initially dismayed again by my former mentors.  I have a feeling most of them still don’t know about Bio2010.  Then I remembered something central to my beliefs that I hope isn’t lost by the previous passages of griping: students need to take responsibility for their education too.  As a person who has always respected teaching in the classroom, as well as mentoring undergrads early in the bench science, I should have known about Bio2010.  I should have engaged and been part of the National Academies’ call, and I blame myself for not actively seeking such a goal.

This year I hope to participate in exploring the Bio2010 program with the HHMI, implementing some fresh techniques, and engaging my students with principles for GOOD undergraduate education.  We are facing many college seniors who can’t even perform long division.  They need to be gently reminded of their responsibilities, but they also need to be taught well.  Just yesterday I spent an hour going through the practice and reasoning behind serial dilutions.  I quickly learned that the student knew what to do, because the student memorized the steps out of self-motivation, but didn’t understand the basic purpose behind the task.  This was due to gaps in curriculum and fear of communicating with certain teachers who were lousy at delivering the requisite material – logarithmic progression, orders of magnitude, connecting this to the minuscule size context in molecular biology.

If you’re interested in an example where Bio2010 is starting to make a difference, check out these slides presented on the massive curriculum changes taking place at the University of Delaware.

By the way here is the paper by Chickering & Gamsen with the seven principles outlined.

A Chronicle editorial on the poor mentoring taking place in the graduate humanities fields. Has some interesting and nasty comments.  But I agree with the author.  There is a need for better professional development.  Though I think in the basic sciences it’s a reverse of what he describes: in the humanities, Ph.D. graduates expect to be in a faculty spot; while I feel that in the basic sciences it’s expected you won’t right now, and consequently because of the devaluing of teaching there is an ever-increasing need for specific scientific training to simply… teach, especially at small non-research institutions.

And finally, something I find interesting.  UDel is offering a combined Ph.D./MBA through their biology department. You might have noticed I mentioned fiscal training parenthetically.  Because of the dismal funding cycle we are in (happens every couple decades) the last three years of my Ph.D. involved exquisite training in the management of laboratory finances and innovative methods for funding research.  Alas, this goes largely unrecognized.