Professors face a number of challenges in teaching science to undergraduate and graduate students.  Some of them are relatively easy to fix, while others pose significant challenges.  With research becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, should (and can) the undergraduate science curriculum evolve to reflect the emerging landscape?  We spoke with Professor Teaster Baird, Jr. about the current state of education and the solutions that may rescue it.

What classes have you taught so far?

I’ve taught a variety of courses since I’ve been at San Francisco State. As far as lecture courses go, I’ve taught General Biochemistry, which is a survey course for non-majors, Biochemistry I and II which is the two semester sequence for biochemistry and cell and molecular biology majors, a graduate course I developed called Proteins and Enzymes and most recently General Chemistry I. I’ve also taught Biochemistry I Lab and a couple of seminar courses as well.

What have you found to be the most consistent challenge, year-to-year, with teaching students?

That’s a good question. Most of the classes I teach are undergraduate courses and every year the student population is different and each presents its own challenges. But I think the biggest challenge for me from year to year has been trying to balance content and pacing. The way our curriculum is structured, the courses build on one another so it is important to cover the material in Course A so the student will be prepared for Course B which will likely be taught by a different professor. So you can’t leave topics out because that topic or those topics might be something the next professor builds on. One year, I taught Biochem I one semester and the Biochem II the following semester so I could have a little more control of the continuity. Most students try to take the sequential courses in consecutive semesters, so I figured those who had Biochem I with me would take Biochem II the following semester. That group of students was already familiar with me and my teaching and exam styles and I could teach the second course knowing what they had in the first course and consequently I could test (and challenge) them appropriately.

What do you think is most challenging from the students’ perspective?

The course I’ve taught the most is Biochem I, so I’ll use that one as my point of reference. Biochem I is the first course that students encounter where they use concepts from all of the chemistry courses they have taken up to that point so students can feel a bit overwhelmed. In my first lecture, I try to prepare students for this by telling them that these divisions in chemistry we have are all artificial and that they’re going to see that in biochemistry. They use the quantitative skills they should have picked up in general chemistry and they use what they learned about organic reactions—pushing electrons, reactivity of chemical groups, SN1 and SN2, etc. On top of that, they have to learn the new ‘language’ of biochemistry. The amount of material they are expected to master is huge.

How do you address the concerns of both the faculty and students in these matters?

Trying to address these concerns is one of the reasons I wanted to teach General Chemistry. In our discussions about the curriculum, the faculty of the department collectively came to the conclusion that we don’t talk to each other enough about how we teach and what we teach our students. For example, When students enroll in my Biochemistry I course, I assume that they were taught the general chemistry topics that they needed, but I can’t say that I ever talked to the general chemistry instructors to see to what degree or how in depth they covered those. So I wanted to teach general chemistry to gain a better appreciation of whether my expectations and assumptions were realistic and accurate. I also wanted to get in the trenches and catch the students early to show them how the things they learn in Gen. Chem. were important because I, as a practicing biochemist, still use those concepts and skills in my work. So we’re trying to communicate with each other more so that our students have a more seamless and consistent learning experience.

Many undergraduates are required to take Biology, Chemistry and Biochemistry to fulfill degree requirements.  How do you think the current educational system handles the integration of these disciplines?

Honestly, not very well. I think that part of the problem is that students, especially new students, take these courses thinking that they are separate and distinct and don’t relate to one another so they don’t try to make connections on their own. I think it is our job as educators to show students these connections early in their chemistry education so that they can begin to think in a more integrative fashion on their own as they take more advanced courses. Sometimes I’ll hear my colleagues complain about how students are just learning facts and can’t apply them or relate them to anything. My first thought is “did you teach them how to use the facts?” I think that’s part of my job. I know how science works. My students don’t. My job is to teach them what they do not know. Research has become increasingly interdisciplinary and the lines and divisions are blurred more than ever. To prepare students who will be entering the scientific workforce and ‘thinkforce’, we, as educators, need to start training students to think in a more integrative way.

Can you envision a more appropriate way to teach these subjects?

That’s the hard part, but I think finding an appropriate way to teach the core subjects to fully prepare the students would be a fun and exciting thing to do. If anyone who specializes in chemical/biochemical education has any ideas, I’d be happy to try them out!

As interdisciplinary research becomes more popular, is there room for college curriculum to evolve with research, or is change a major uphill battle?

Not only do I think there’s room, I think it’s absolutely necessary. Making the changes would be an uphill battle not because the value in curricular change isn’t acknowledged, but it is going to involve a huge investment of time and effort.

If you had it your way, how would an incoming Chemistry, Biology or Biochemistry student’s introductory requirements look?

Ideally, what I would really like to see is introductory courses that have specialty lab components where the integration of other disciplines with a given field could be demonstrated or specialty problems could be worked out. For example, every biology, chemistry and biochemistry major has to take physics, but the physics course is probably going to be taught from the physicists’ perspective and this may or may not seem important or relevant to the freshman biology major.  What would be useful is if the lab component of the course was specialized where the principles and topics presented in physics could be used in a biologically based experiments for the biology major, in chemically based experiments for the chemistry major, etc. After all, the best way to learn science is by doing it. The physics instructor would give the large lecture to all the students taking the course and once a week, all the biology majors would go to the specialty lab section where the principles of the week are applied to their specific major. This way the lecturer could give the lecture as he or she has always done and the redesign would take place in the lab component. I can think of several obstacles that would likely be encountered in trying to implement such a plan, but it’s one I think would be very interesting and exciting.

Teaster Baird, Jr. is an associate professor, proud father, devoted husband and avid photographer.  When not preparing lectures, Teaster can be found in the lab, advising the newest generation of scientists, or hiding in his office from undergraduates who just took his exams.

Think about it. I had to first get my PhD which meant I had to go to graduate school. Now that wouldn’t have been so bad if graduate school was like professional schools and had a definite time line. If you start medical school in 2009, you can plan on graduating in 2013 with your MD. If you start law school in 2009, you can plan on graduating in 2012 with your JD. If you start graduate school in 2009, you can plan on graduating—and that’s it. It may take you 4 years, it may take you 7. If you are the only scientist in your family like I am, you know how demoralizing it is when your parents, who have no idea how science works, ask, “when are you going to graduate?” and your most truthful and honest answer is, “the hell if I know.”

Going through graduate school can be like driving a car down a long highway that has no signs or mile markers so you never know how far you are from your destination and you don’t even know if there’s another gas station along the way to help you get to the end. It’s grueling. And I lived like a pauper. Now, it’s great that I didn’t have to pay for it, but what I made as a graduate student was just enough to survive on. (When I was in graduate school, I remember asking a friend if he wanted to go to a movie—a matinee—and he said he couldn’t afford it because he had already splurged and bought a name brand box of cereal for once instead of the store brand. Sad.)

Then, once I graduated, I did a post-doc, which was another 4 years of training (i.e., another 4 years of poverty). Several times along the journey, I considered a career change or at the very least a career redirection. As you read this gut-wrenching testimony, you might think,”If it was that bad, why did you stick with it?” Well, my answer is deceptively simple. The answer is—wait for it—I couldn’t help myself.

Seriously. That’s it. A scientist is who I am. It’s not just my job. It’s not just a passion. It’s the way that I view and appreciate and inquire about the natural world. I think I first discovered this when I was a kid taking piano lessons. A guy came to our house to tune our old upright piano and he was nice enough to let me watch him work. What was really cool, though, was that he explained how he tuned the piano. He explained how the notes assigned to the keys of the piano were based on the tuning of the A-key above middle-C to the same frequency as the “A440” tuning fork (because the fork is manufactured to vibrate at 440 Hz when struck). He explained and showed me how the soundboard on the back of the piano amplified the sound generated from the striking of the strings by the felt covered hammers inside the piano.

I found the deconstruction and explanation of the role of each component to be exciting and satisfying. I liked that there was an order and a reason that the piano worked and sounded the way it did. When he left (and when my parents weren’t home) I took the piano apart to see if those same tricks worked for a kid like me (I guess even then I was testing to see if the results were reproducible).

But it wasn’t just musical instruments. I wondered about how everything worked. From pianos and guitars to microwaves and radios. As I learned more and more through school and through my own reading, I became more interested in how living things “worked” at the molecular level, and I guess that’s why I’m a biochemist today. These days, I’m not taking apart pianos, but proteins. I don’t tune keys to a certain frequency but I try to make my protein play a different “tune” by replacing its “keys”–the amino acids.

So there you have it. My graduate school and post-doc journeys were difficult and psychologically exhausting paths I had to take to gain the skills I needed to explore the biomolecular world in a way that satisfied me. To answer the original question, “why did I become a scientist?” I’d have to say that I didn’t really become a scientist. I was just born that way. I was just lucky enough to find a job lets me be who I am.

Teaster Baird, Jr. is an associate professor, proud father, devoted husband and avid photographer.  When not preparing lectures, Teaster can be found in the lab, advising the newest generation of scientists, or hiding in his office from undergraduates who just took his exams.