Small Things Considered

Teaching Students To See Through “Microbial Eyes"

by Mark O. Martin

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. - Marcel Proust

At my primarily undergraduate institution (3,000 students total, 12 Biology faculty, over 50 Biology majors graduated per year), there is only one microbiology course, and it is generally taught to seniors (and not all seniors at that).  Considering the power and primacy of the microbial world, I have always found that lack of coverage pedagogically unsettling.  No biology major could graduate without learning a fair amount about plants; what about bacteria and archaea?  It is certainly true that some classes—cell biology, genetics, and molecular biology come to mind—have aspects that intersect with matters microbial.  But I find that my seniors, after a semester of my prokaryotic proselytizing, are very aware of a significant gap in their education.

“Doc Martin’s” 2012 Microbiology class.

This is why I would urge any and all microbiologists out there to push for more microbiology, earlier in the curriculum, both in lecture and laboratory.  I do what I can to promote “microbial pride” among my seniors, as you can see from the photograph of my class this semester.  I even came up with a logo, which I showed during a presentation at the American Society for Microbiology General Meeting in San Francisco last June, suggesting that we microbiologists should push to “occupy the curriculum,” intellectually speaking. After all, consider how genetics, molecular biology, and biochemistry have progressed over the past century.  Now consider the path of that progress without the use of prokaryotes as a model system!  I believe we will also find that the fields of ecology and evolution will also be equally as indebted to bacteria and archaea over time.

Why Medical Microbiology Is Not Like Stamp Collecting

by Elio

Wonder, at the 2010 Edinburgh International Science Festival. Image credit: Edinburgh Festival Guide. Source.

I started teaching microbiology to medical students in 1958, at a time when biomedical science was in its full ascendancy. Grant money was there practically for the asking, jobs were plentiful, universities and their medical schools were frenetically building up their science base. Not entirely surprising, the general feeling of young Ph.D.’s such as myself in basic sciences departments was that we were doing the medical students a favor by stooping to teach them. Maybe I exaggerate, but not by much. We had a long ways to go.

Seeing Biology Through the Eyes of Visually-Impaired Students

by Amy Cheng Vollmer

Lettuce centrifuge. Source.

I have been teaching introductory biology in higher Ed since 1985, my first four years at Mills College and now at Swarthmore College since 1989. At both institutions, these courses (lecture + laboratory, taught by faculty members) were open to majors and non-majors. Through these years, it has been amazing to see the evolution of visual resources offered by textbook publishers. First the text illustrations became more sophisticated, reflecting our increased understanding of cells, molecules, organisms, and ecosystems. We were keen to make black and white copies of those illustrations onto transparencies, being careful to purchase the kind of acetate films that wouldn’t melt on the drum of the copier! Then came the wonderful transparencies with figures and tables from the texts in color—better than sliced bread! Shortly thereafter, these were arriving on CDs, and now they are accessible at websites in .pdf and .ppt formats. And oh, the animations available from publishers and from many research laboratory websites! There are some great YouTube videos about glycolysis, the TCA cycle—even the classic Protein Synthesis movie. Among my favorites for teaching introductory biology are the Oster laboratory (UC Berkeley) animations of the ATP synthase, for me there being no better way to integrate protein structure/function and proton motive force/oxidative phosphorylation. Check out the animations from his laboratory here.

There is Hope

by Elio

Through the years, we have not had many opportunities to look forwards, to get a feeling for how science is taught in middle and high schools. But we have had a couple of wonderful encounters, one with the Jefferson Middle School and Mrs. Putnam, their sixth grade teacher in Jackson, Mississippi. Their blog, Science is a Blast is well worth visiting, which is an understatement. The number of great links alone is worth the price! We’re glad that this blog is somewhere among the ones offered to the students.

Source.

The second of our past contacts is a blog called Extreme Biology, maintained by teacher Stacy Baker at Calverton School in Huntington Maryland. This blog, notable for its depth and breadth, won the 2008 Edublog Award for Best Class Blog. And MS. Baker was prominently featured in an episode of NPR’s Science Friday. One of her students wrote a story about how wood can be treated with fungi to produce Stradivarius-grade violins based on something we had written here.

Not knowing much about the state of education in this country, we are chary of commenting on the current state of affairs. However it is clear from our brief contact with youngsters and from other anecdotal indications that at some of the best teaching is very good indeed. Let’s hope it spreads further.

Preaching to a Prokaryotic Choir

by Mark Martin

At my small liberal arts undergraduate institution, there is only one microbiology course, and it is generally taken by seniors. Here is an image of my Spring 2011 students, and below is the logo that the talented artist Kaitlin Reiss came up for our class T-shirts. One of my frustrations as an educator is how much I would like to tell students about microbiology, and how little time exists in my one course; if it were up to me, there would be a great deal more microbiology in freshman and sophomore biology courses. There is a reason that my students often call me a “microbial supremacist,” I suppose. Guilty as charged!

Pop Quiz

by Elio

Parlez-vous Biologie? In this spirit, we thought you might enjoy taking a quiz that tests your familiarity with terms of biology. To check your answer, you can get a definition of each of the terms by clicking on them. Many are from our column Of Terms in Biology, some from other posts, and a couple are just related bystanders. Here’s our scoring sheet:

26-30 — Magnifique
21-25 — Trés bon
16-20 — Pas mal
11-15 — Comme ci, comme ça
5-10 — Tant pis
0-4 — Bon voyage

We’ve Figured It Out!

by Elio

Source.

It’s been over 50 years since I began teaching graduate students, but only in the last few  do I think that we have it figured out. Here in San Diego, a consortium of research institutions has gotten together to provide a somewhat novel microbiology course for beginning graduate students. Here is what we do. For each of our biweekly 1.5 hour lectures we bring in a guest lecturer whose job it is to explain, in 40 minutes or less, why his or her field is the finest in all of biology This is followed by a discussion of a paper that has been read by the whole class. Now, I don’t pretend that this is totally original, but it is at variance with my previous experience of having one or two professors teach such a course by themselves.

Good Writing Beats Bad Writing, Most Any Day

by Elio

Tree of Good Writing, by Hiroshige, circa 1846. Source.

There isn't any thought or idea that can't be expressed in a fairly simple declarative sentence.....
                            E.B. White, Fro-Joy

Just when some people believe that the world is going to hell in a hand basket, here I am, ready to make a cheerful personal statement: Scientific writing is improving! Of course I base this on reading the microbiological literature, but assume that it’s generally true. What makes me say so? Well, more often than not, current research papers and reviews contain a fair share of simple declarative sentences. In my earlier days, typical statements were often in the passive form: “The effect of X on Y has been studied.” The first person form is now accepted, much to everyone’s relief. And titles of articles tend to informative. Gone is Studies on the metabolism of Escherichia coli: Part XIV. And, although I couldn’t swear to it, I believe that the language in graduate student papers has also improved. Nowadays, even humor is permissible. It has even permeated this blog, as exemplified by the wicked sense of humor of my co-blogger, Merry, who has come up with titles such as The Bacterium That Doesn’t Know How Tie Its Own Shoelaces, Coxiella Escapes From Cell, and A Holin One.

What has happened? Have scientists turned into Hemingways overnight? Good question. I would guess that changes in culture (sensu lato) are the big factor. We seem to be more factual in communication and less prone to circumlocutions and Victorian adornments of speech. So, this may well be part of a general development, but what about its roots? What caused these cultural changes? I am no wiser.

Making it Personal

by Amy Cheng Vollmer

Here we are looking at the beginning of another academic year! Like many faculty members, my teaching load includes courses in my area of expertise (microbiology) and also some outside of my true comfort zone (introductory biology). Over the years, my attitude toward teaching introductory biology has shifted from dread to resignation to acceptance and finally, nowadays, to excitement.

At Swarthmore, we offer only one tier of introductory biology—not one geared for majors and another for people satisfying their science ‘general education’ requirement. In fact, students here are required to take two courses in the Division of Natural Sciences and Engineering, one of which must have a lab (or ‘practicum’ to distinguish it from language labs, for example.) Hence our Biology 001 (Cellular and Molecular Biology) and 002 (Organismal and Population Biology) courses are popular choices. The enrollment is between 90 and 120 each term. Seated in the lecture hall is an audience with great diversity: ethnic, high school experience, interest, motivation, aptitude, and attitude. Many times we end up with ‘converts’ to Biology, while also discouraging a few students who simply want to memorize.

Hello Again, Metabolism!

by Amy Cheng Vollmer

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Years ago, pathways of intermediary metabolism made up a significant portion of biochemistry and microbiology courses. Therein, students learned about interconversions and connections between pathways, and they could follow the carbons as they moved from acetate into the cholesterol molecule and many others. But the advent of exciting new methodologies—structural biology, recombinant DNA, molecular genetics, immunochemistry, probes, blots, microarrays, metagenomics, and more—crowded much of metabolism right off the syllabus. Given that teaching pathways could be dry and boring, faculty often elected to substitute more trendy and exciting topics instead. To be sure, they thought metabolism was important, but assumed ‘someone else must be teaching it.’