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This is not how the semester is supposed to end. And yet we have ended this way before. A gunman on campus.  Senseless murder. Suicide. This is not the goodbye post I intended to write to you, my students. But my blogs are nothing if not honest, and I must write from where I am.

Last Thursday, Reading Day, I took the morning off to sneak in a long run. Long runs are difficult to sneak and it was nearly noon by the time I arrived at my office, with just enough time to prepare for an academic advisors meeting in Derring at 1 PM. As I walked across campus with a colleague, the sirens began blaring. We waited for the follow-up announcement, “this is just a test”, but as you know, that announcement never came. We met up with other people headed to the meeting and one of them received the first VT Alert that a person with a gun was reported near Cassell Coliseum. We began walking quickly, and then running into Derring Hall.

After sending out some messages to cancel the meeting, I headed up to the SCALE-UP class. Gary Kinder was there with some of his students who were giving their final presentations. The atmosphere in SCALE-UP was calm. The students seemed to be OK, but I realized that I was not.

Many friends have described Thursday as surreal, and I would agree. I felt myself simultaneously experiencing the crisis of the present and of 2007. I told myself I had come to SCALE-UP to ‘check-up’ on the students, but in reality, I believe I went there seeking comfort. In SCALE-UP, I have spent the very best moments of the semester.

On Thursday, I was surrounded by students in SCALE-UP, great kids, but they were not you. Except for Angelica, who was working that day in her role as teaching assistant. As always, so strong, so positive regardless of the circumstances.  Later that day, I received an e-mail from Jae, who was safe in his apartment and checking to see if I was OK.

As my mind flailed and tumbled back to that dark, terrible time, Angelica and Jae provided me with a safe landing.

After the shootings on April 16, the Virginia Tech community reeled for about a week, then classes were resumed. I was teaching Developmental Biology to about 50 students. SCALE-UP did not exist back then, but my classroom was just down the hall on the third floor of Derring. We met Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and on that first Tuesday class after the shootings, I did not know how I could possibly face my students. I realized that they had come back to classes on Monday, and had experienced each and every professor exposing his or her deepest vulnerabilities to them. Most students view their professors as authority figures, and most professors view themselves as such. None of my colleagues felt authoritative after April 16. Most trembled and cried on that first day back to class. I decided my students had probably had enough of that on Monday and so I kept my comments very brief on Tuesday morning. I told them that I was sorry, so so sorry, and that I cared for them. We discussed the range of options they had for completing the semester.

And then I panicked. Almost every student had come back for class, even though none were obliged to be there. All 50 pairs of eyes were looking at me expectantly. I didn’t know what to do. “Well,” I finally stumbled, “I have some material prepared that we could discuss, if you’d like.” The room was silent.  Then Yi Zhao, who always sat directly in front of me, reached under his desk. He brought up his notebook, opened it to a blank page, took out a pen, and looked up. One by one, the other students did the same. Zhao did not say a word, but in that quiet act, he gave me what I needed to go on. He was not restoring my supreme authority, something I do not believe a teacher ever really has. Zhao gave me hope. Hope that no matter what suffering, tragedy and oppression we face, the desire for learning prevails. Perhaps that desire and the promise of learning IS our hope.  Thank you Zhao. I doubt that you realize what an impact your quiet act of grace, strength and leadership had on my life.

Everyone who experienced April 16, 2007 at Virginia Tech was changed. Some have never recovered and I am so terribly sorry for that. I struggled for about a year to find meaning in my work life. Eventually, I realized that I needed to do more for students and with students, and gratefully found opportunities to match my desire. SCALE-UP is one of the outcomes. In SCALE-UP, the role of students as authors of their own learning is explicit. In SCALE-UP, I have the best opportunity I have ever had to know my students as individuals, with amazing, multi-faceted personalities and lives. In SCALE-UP, I never take for granted what a privilege it is to play a role in the education of the next generation, and to be grateful for all that I learn from my students.

To my classes of 2007 and 2011, thank you for being a part of my life. “I cursed the gloom that set upon us, but I know that I love you so.”

The Rain Song by Led Zeppelin

This is the springtime of my loving – the second season I am to know
You are the sunlight in my growing – so little warmth I’ve felt before.
It isn’t hard to feel me glowing – I watched the fire that grew so low.

It is the summer of my smiles – flee from me Keepers of the Gloom.
Speak to me only with your eyes. It is to you I give this tune.
Ain’t so hard to recognize – These things are clear to all from
time to time.

Talk Talk – I’ve felt the coldness of my winter
I never thought it would ever go. I cursed the gloom that set upon us…
But I know that I love you so

These are the seasons of emotion and like the winds they rise and fall
This is the wonder of devotion – I see the torch we all must hold.
This is the mystery of the quotient – Upon us all a little rain must fall.

This weekend, I had the opportunity to spend extended time in two new learning spaces.

The first space was our very own SCALE-UP classroom.

SCALE-UP in Derring Hall

This weekend the university held an open house and I was asked to meet with any visitors who might come to the SCALE-UP class between 10 AM and 3 PM on Saturday. The SCALE-UP classroom is a lovely space, but I realized that SCALE-UP isn’t SCALE-UP without the students. Fortunately, my students were game for my extended office hours  and most of them showed up to work with their teammates on their weekly and final projects. Since no one had to be there (except me), the atmosphere was even more relaxed as usual. We worked hard, we ate chili, and we (at least I)  had a good time.

Last week, Shelli Fowler’s contemporary pedagogy class visited SCALE-UP. I was surprised at how unsettling many of these graduate students found the space to be for them. These are novice and future teachers, and like me, they were trained in learning environments very different from SCALE-UP. One student commented that SCALE-UP reminded them of kindergarten.

Today, I had the privilege of visiting the brand new Prices Fork Elementary School where my daughter and her classmates will spend their first full day tomorrow. I’ve visited many schools and was actively involved in the design of SCALE-UP so I thought I knew what to expect from a contemporary learning space. Was I in for a surprise! The tour left me utterly speechless and in tears. The new school has its own gymnasium (separate from the cafeteria!) with a rock climbing wall, plus a yoga room, a sculpture garden outside the art rooms and several outdoor classrooms for days when it is just too nice to learn inside. Ms. Dollie Cottrill, our principal, told me, “We told the architects what we wanted, and they listened!” Almost all of the teachers were present on this Sunday afternoon, and none of them could stop smiling. I’ve always maintained that Prices Fork was a great school because of the amazing teachers and staff. I still believe this will be true but imagine what amazing teachers can do in learning spaces that foster creativity, innovation, and a sense of sheer joy for being in school.

Chloe's new classroom at PFES

Chloe in the hallway at PFES

Simonne and Chloe under PFES quilt featuring artwork of our friend, Jane Vance

a view of the hallway lights at PFES

student artwork inspired by Pablo Picasso on one of many showcase sites at PFES

This glimpse of our new school suggests that indeed, SCALE-UP shares many features with kindergarten. However, there is one notable difference: even though PFES does not open officially until tomorrow, it is already filled with artifacts of student learning. Lennie Scott-Webber of Radford University stresses the importance of these artifacts for students to gain a sense of belonging and even ownership in their learning spaces. SCALE-UP is used for many different classes and at the end of each class, we dutifully erase the white boards, leaving the room clean but unfortunately, rather sterile looking, for the next class. Hopefully, in the next iteration of SCALE-UP,  we can leave some space where we can leave our mark. We are building a SCALE-UP-like study lounge in Lee Hall next year. There will be students but no formal classes or teachers. I hope those white boards get filled up with equations, models, cartoons, even jokes. I hope students post announcements all over the walls. I hope they leave their mark.

This week, my class will be visited by an origami artist. My hope is that we will be able to hang our creations from the ceiling and leave them there for the other classes to ponder and enjoy.

This article from the New York times has been mentioned or sent to me about a dozen times since it was published last week:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/education/edlife/why-science-majors-change-their-mind-its-just-so-darn-hard.html

I agree with most of the article, which seems to validate many of our new initiatives in the College of Science at Virginia Tech: SCALE-UP and the Integrated Science Curriculum to be sure. However, I hate the title, and in fact, the message sent in the article runs counter to the title. Students (certainly not MY students) are not leaving science because it is so darn hard. Science is hard. Damn hard, indeed. But my students can handle the work. My students can do anything they want to do. However, many of these students are leaving science because their science classes are boring, not made relevant, and stifle the very qualities that brought them to declare a science major in the first place: curiosity, creativity and a desire to make the world a better place.

The world needs more scientists. We need scientists who bring fresh ideas and diverse perspectives to the world’s greatest problems including hunger, pollution, poverty and disease. The kinds of people we need as scientists will not be motivated by listening to me (or you) talk at them in 50 minutes segments. They will not be stimulated by memorizing endless facts or filling in little bubbles on an op-scan. They will be bored, disengaged, and given their talents, they will leave.

Good for the humanities for attracting these students, not because of inflated grades as the article suggests, but perhaps because students have opportunities to exercise their talents in these majors. The world needs more artists, writers and philosophers as well. But we do need more scientists, and I believe it is time for science educators to wake up and stop asking what is wrong with students these days but what might be made right in science higher education.

Beginning next week, our class will engage with the cell biology of cancer. Hanahan and Weinberg’s paradigm shifting “Hallmarks of Cancer”, published in 2000 and their recent sequel, “Hallmarks of Cancer: The Next Generation”, will guide our discussion. For over a decade, I have chosen this pathology as the basis for learning about cell signaling, cell cycle and cell death. Not only does cancer make sense as a conceptual framework for learning these topics, but cancer also evokes an emotional engagement with the topic. The American Cancer Society reports that 1 in 3 women and 1 in 2 men will develop cancer during their lifetimes. Given those statistics, I feel safe in concluding that cancer matters to everybody in my class.

While emotional engagement with educational subject matter can be a strong motivational tool, when we are talking about cancer, it can potentially be a roadblock. A discussion of cancer, no matter how factual or academic or cellular can take people to exactly the places they would rather avoid, especially when trying to focus on school. With an awareness of this challenge, I have always invited my students to share their cancer stories as a way of preparing themselves for the weeks ahead. Some choose to tell, some do not, and that is fine.  This year, I have extended the same invitation, but rather than hosting a discussion in class, I have suggested blogging as the forum for those who would like to tell their cancer stories. Here is mine:

I got the first phone call in the summer of 2000. I was an Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech with a promising research program investigating cell cycle checkpoints in frog embryos. Frog embryos share many properties with cancer cells, and I had recently been funded with my first big grant from the National Institutes of Health to support my work. Mom said that Dad had been to see his doctor, insisting on an X-ray because of a pain in his chest that was not going away. “Jill, the X-ray showed a black spot as big as my fist. What does that mean?”  What was I supposed to say? My family never really accepted the distinction between a Ph.D. and an M.D.  and assumed that if I had “Dr.”  in front of my name, I could answer all of their medical concerns. Also, that I would know what to do in situations like these.

The diagnosis came a few days later. Multiple myeloma. This is essentially a cancer of the bone marrow, of the precursor cells to B cells, which produce antibodies.  I began my research right way. “No cure.” “Estimated life span: 1 – 5 years.” “Etiology, unknown, some correlations to industrial exposure to chemicals.”

I rapidly became an expert on multiple myeloma. I understood the disease, the treatment options, the test results. What I didn’t have in hand, all that I really wanted, was the cure. The most promising treatment was autologous stem cell therapy. This option made perfect sense to me: remove stem cells from the bone marrow and separate the healthy from the cancer cells. Apply chemotherapy to essentially destroy the patient’s remaining bone marrow stem cells and then repopulate the hematopoetic system with healthy cells. There were risks to be sure, but the design was brilliant and had been successful for many people in clinical trials.

My Dad was scared but appreciated the logic of this approach and wanted to pursue this avenue. We read more. We attended workshops. We found the specialists. We were ready to move.

We were denied this treatment. The doctor explained that my Dad’s other health problems: high blood pressure, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, placed him in a category that was “statistically too risky for the procedure.” “My father is not a statistic”, I wanted to scream, but both the physicians and insurance company would not approve this approach. They offered the more alternative conservative treatments of surgery, then radiation then chemotherapy. Based on my reading, I surmised this would likely buy him a year or two, not the long lifetime he deserved, but we decided that by then, additional options would be available.

Dad was stoic throughout the course of treatment. He and Mom lived in Florida, so I was not a direct witness to the effects of the treatments. Dad told me he felt fine, and Mom told me the truth. After a rough 6 months, Dad was pronounced in remission.  He was put on thalidomide as a maintenance. He enjoyed several visits with his baby granddaughter, my daughter Simonne. He took her to the beach. He ate Cheerios with her.

About two years from the diagnosis, Dad declared he was cured. He and Mom talked about moving to Virginia to be closer to Simonne and the new grandbaby I was carrying. Then Dad started feeling tired. A routine visit to the oncologist showed his M protein count was up.

I have a hard time remembering much of the next few months. Everything happened quickly. Relapse. Aggressive chemotherapy. M counts up one week, down the next, and way up the third.

What I do remember distinctly is my visit with my parents in September 2002. It was my mom’s birthday. Dad had a break between chemo treatments. He slept most of the day and was very irritable. A life-long devout atheist, he initiated a prayer before dinner one evening, thanking God for bringing me and Simonne to see him. The next day, he asked my mom  take him shopping. He could barely walk but insisted on going to the florist and refused my mom’s offer to make the purchase for him. He came back to their house and presented me with a gorgeous bouquet that he picked out himself.

The next day Simonne and I were to leave for the airport and my Dad was scheduled for chemotherapy. I offered to come with him, but he insisted I get “on the road” and avoid the traffic. Simonne and I returned to Virginia. After I left, Dad told Mom he was not going to chemotherapy. Mom offered to reschedule. Dad said no. He was not going back anymore.

About a week later, September 17, 2002, I had the chance to take the Hokie Bird private jet to travel with some colleagues to Purdue University to visit their cancer research center. I enjoyed the flight immensely and fortunately, kept the morning sickness at bay. When I returned home late that evening, my husband was giving Simonne a bath. He looked up at me and said gently, “Your father passed away this morning.” He told me all that my mother had related to him and than added his own commentary. “He died with dignity and grace.”

It’s been nine years since Dad died. He never met Chloe but she loves to hear stories about Pap. On occasion, I still pick up the phone to call my dad. He was a brilliant engineer and used to talk me through fixing pieces of laboratory equipment that he had never actually seen. Dad had a stressful job but he never missed an evening with the family, refused to work weekends, and always, always had time for me. He may not be a physical presence in my life, but he is never very far.

I love you Dad.

Dad and Simonne

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/sports/julia-chase-brand-a-leading-pioneer-in-womens-running.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all%3Fsrc%3Dtp&smid=fb-share

Unrelated to cell and molecular biology, but too inspiring not to share.

"I feel more like myself when I'm out running."

reposted from my New Media Blog: This afternoon, in our New Media Seminar, we had the bizarre experience of following the Twitter stream of Marshall McLuhan, whose writings we were discussing. McLuhan passed away some time ago so apparently he was tweeting from the grave. I struggled a bit to comprehend McLuhan’s message that the “medium was the message.” How could the format, the vehicle, be more important than the content?

Regarding contemporary science, content is everything. More specifically, data are everything. Someone might articulate the most elegant and compelling theories regarding the most significant unknowns in the natural world, but until evidence in the form of reproducible data are generated to support those theories, little attention is given to these thinkers. Rare is the scientist-philosopher, and that is a shame.

How do scientists communicate their content, their data? Through the 20th century, “serious” scientific content was communicated in print, specifically, in peer-reviewed journals. The format of a scientific journal article in my field is fairly rigid: Abstract (150-300 words, depending on the journal), Introduction (literature review), Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, References. Strict page or word limitations exist for most journals. The “meat” of the scientific article is the Results section, conveyed through a series of figures and tables (usually 5-10 per article). Each figure possesses a descriptive legend of a few sentences. The Results section also contains a narrative “walk” through the data in prose, with references to the figures and table.

The Discussion section that follows should provide deeper interpretation of the data and make connections to other published works in the field. For the most part, speculations that extend beyond the scope of the data are not permitted. Philosophizing is prohibited entirely.

There is little room for literary creativity in scientific articles. I once worked in the same department as a brilliant developmental biologist who submitted a research article with the Abstract written as a limerick. All of the requisite information was present, the abstract fell within the 200-word limit, and it began with “there once was an embryo from…” The journal refused to publish his article.

Scientific articles are written, submitted to the journal of choice and then reviewed by two or three scientists selected by the editors of the journal. The reviewers are kept anonymous. Depending on the opinions of the reviewers (the jury) and the final decision of the editor (the judge) the article will be accepted as is (rare), accepted with modifications, or rejected entirely.
How has scientific communication changed in the era of electronic media? Most journals are published both in electronic and print format. Some are published entirely on-line. Nowadays, the submission and review process is conducted electronically, which has accelerated the time from submission to decision from a matter of months to a matter of weeks. Beyond these efficiencies, the medium has not changed the message very significantly.

The switch to electronic journal format has not really altered the kinds of data submitted, with the exception of videos, which can provide compelling records of temporal experiments. Undoubtedly, each article typically contains more data, since page charges are no longer a restriction. However, much of these data are relegated to “Supplementary Materials” accessed only as a link from the main page. Perhaps the greatest change is in the references, which are now hot links to the article cited, accessible provided the linked article is published in an open access journal or the reader works for an institution with a paid subscription to that journal. This practice of linking journal-to-journal is a bit reminiscent of Bush’s Memex with the added dimensions of the World Wide Web.

With these exceptions, the electronic journals have adopted the conventions of the print medium: Abstract-Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion-Reference. Reviewers remain anonymous, even more so, because in the old days, it was sometimes possible to determine the reviewer from the handwriting, and a few bold souls would proudly sign their reviews.

And most significantly, once an article is published, it becomes a fait accompli. The work becomes a defined and static entity, a unit known as a “pub”. This is where the greatest opportunities are missed, I believe. Once a scientific article is published, even in electronic format, there is no simple mechanism for amendment to that body of work. If the scientists who wrote the article discover that they made a mistake, they must submit a formal Erratum, which remains a real mark of shame in the scientific community. “You lazy bum – why weren’t you more careful in the first place.” It would be so simple and seems so logical in the current medium for scientists to be able to amend their own work, to post additional data, whether confirming or contradictory to the original conclusions, in order to continue a line of inquiry.

And the process of linking one data set to another remains hindered by the packaging of bodies of work into the conventions of an article. When one published article is linked to the referenced article therein, the link is to the other article in its entirely, not to the specific relevant figure or statement from that work.

In writing many of my own articles, I have wanted to compare my own results to a particular data set from another article. There is no convenient way to link to that information, even though it is readily available. Part of the problem is copyright, but equally challenging is the mindset that the body of work as originally published must be kept intact. Even with proper referencing and permission, it is simply not considered acceptable form to deconstruct a scientific publication in order to make new meaning.

Some journals have added moderated comment threads to the on-line version of the articles. I haven’t seen much dialog generated from these, but I suspect there are lively discussions on some of the most active and disputed areas of inquiry. Hopefully, this will be a step in the direction of a more free-flowing discussion and exchange of scientific ideas.

However, I doubt that many scientists will post unpublished data in such a forum for fear of being scooped. As long as (academic) scientists are judged by the number or publications and the impact factors of the journals in which they publish, scientific dialog will largely be restricted to the current norms.
However, if the medium is the message, then change seems inevitable. Much of that change is probably underway, but I lack the vantage point to see the forest for the trees that surround me. I look forward to the time in my life where I can appreciate these changes in scientific communication. The nature of the current medium seems to almost guarantee that the practice of science will be more collaborative and more inclusive than the environment in which I was trained. My students will be working in that new realm, and I pledge to do all that I can to help them prepare for what could well be another revolution in science.

Endosymbiosis fascinates me and seems to have this effect on many people. This week in class, we introduced the evolution of the eukaryotic lineage with a focus on two key events – the evolution of mitochondria, which are key organelles in nearly all eukaryotic cells, and the evolution of chloroplasts, and thus, plants.

I can see from a few Google searches that endosymbiosis is considered a theory. That does not mean it didn’t happen! It simple means that we do not know precisely how it happened. And that is what really fascinates me.

According to the theory, an aerobic bacterium (one that can respire using oxygen as a final electron acceptor, and thus, derive much more ATP from a single molecule of sugar than one that must simply rely on anaerobic glycolysis), came to live within a larger anaerobic bacterium. How did that happen? Was it swallowed? Or did it sneak inside, more like a covert operation? And did it happen just once, and that single, random event gave rise to the entire eukaryotic lineage? Or did it happen many times simultaneously? In either scenario, the advantage must have been tremendous for this event to have survived and propagated. The alternative, of course, would have been that the swallowed or invaded organisms might have evolved mechanisms to avoid the other. Most of life as we know it would have been over before it even got started.

And then it happened again, with the precursors of chloroplasts. Imagine the course of evolution if photosynthesis and the ability to fix carbon from carbon dioxide never made it beyond a few single celled prokaryotes. We certainly wouldn’t be here to theorize about all this.

When we look at contemporary cells, we realize that there is no turning back. Since mitochondria and chloroplasts were derived from independently living bacteria, it is no surprise that they possess their own genomes, can replicate and transcribe these genes, and have the machinery to translate their own proteins. What nearly blows my mind is not that they can make their own proteins. That makes sense. However, mitochondria and chloroplasts synthesize only about 10% of their own proteins. The rest are imported into these organelles from nuclear encoded genes. How did these genes get into the nuclear genome??? The fact that these genes are there, means of course, that a mitochondrion or chloroplast can no longer survive on its own, outside of the cell. No more than a liver or a heart or a lung can survive for long outside of the body. Hence, we  call these subcellular structures, organelles. What about the converse, could a eukaryotic cell survive without mitochondria? Probably, at least under pampered conditions, but once the energy requirements exceeded a certain threshold, that cell would waste away for lack of sufficient ATP.

To try to make sense of all this, I try to think of useful metaphors for endosymbiosis. Is endosymbiosis like a long-term romantic relationship? Not a very functional relationship, in my opinion, with one partner sequestering the other from the rest of the world. “I’m only trying to protect you, darling.” The other partner gets even in a sort of passive-aggressive way by controlling the ATP production. “Tired, honey? Here, let me make you feel better.” No, that metaphor is not working at all. Perhaps endosymbiosis is better compared to a corporate merger, a highly functional one. I have friends in the business world who have worked for little companies that were taken over by larger companies. They tell me that their working groups still largely function as a company-within-a-company. They perform a specialized role within the larger operation. However, over time, the boundaries soften a bit. A few employees move in and out between this group and the larger organization. The big company provides the health insurance, the pension and the overall vision. However, if the little subcompany were to pick up and leave, the operation as a whole would come to a standstill, or nearly so.

I can understand how this all happens in the business world. People talk, deals are made, many lawyers are involved. But how this happened eons ago to give rise to eukaryotic cells in all their glory, still baffles and amazes me.

This week, students reported on their favorite breakthrough in molecular biology. As part of the assignment, to help provide a sense of the passage of time, they included information about what else was happening in the world when the breakthrough was made. I also asked them to name the title and artist for a song that was popular at that time. I’ll be putting together a playlist for class on Thursday to set the mood for their reports. The time period spans the 1920’s through 2011, and the playlist includes Bobby Darin, Gloria Gaynor, Poison, Bruno Mars, Blondie and Nat King Cole.

By chance, my husband sent me this link to Bjork’s lastest project, called Biophilia:

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/10/141183659/bjorks-biophilia-interactive-music-pushing-boundaries

Bjork's Biophilia

This week, I am defaulting to a bad habit I have developed on Facebook. When I don’t have anything particularly interesting to post (which happens quite often) I do what many of my friends do – I post about my kids. For this blog, I’ll reference my ‘big kids’ (meant as a term of endearment rather than a diminutive), my students in Cell and Molecular Biology. I just finished grading Assignment 5, which contains one of my favorite pieces of the year. The subject is DNA replication, which can be conceptually challenging. How do the leading and lagging strands, which are oriented in opposite directions and must replicate in a specific direction (5′ to 3′) replicate simultaneously while the replication fork moves unidirectionally? And where do all those players fit in? DNA polymerase I, DNA polymerase III, topoisomerase, single stranded binding proteins, helicase?

I’ve always found that no matter which textbook I’ve adopted, only a subset of my students “get” DNA replication by looking at the figure in the textbook. I would provide figures from three or four different textbooks, and that helped a little. In recent years, YouTube offered some nice animations. But there were always students, quite a few, who still could not conceptualize DNA replication. Most science teachers employ metaphors. The human genome is the “book of life”, for example. After considerable frustration in trying to come up with the best  metaphor for DNA replication for my students, it finally dawned on me. DUH! Let the students make their own metaphors.

Here is where I step aside and let the work of my big kids speak for itself:

Laura, Caitlyn, Cari Lynn and Anna reminding us the ice cream is the answer to most of life's difficult questions.

Julie put her talents to work to crochet a fork complete with Okazaki fragments, RNA primer, SSBs (pins), helicase (scissors) and ligase (ribbon).

From last year, the team who called themselves Dumbledore's Army identified spells that could carry out the action of each enzyme on the fork.

Once again, Esther, John and Brandon managed to make us all hungry.

Lauren created "every Hokies favorite replication fork"

And just so my ‘little kids’ don’t feel left out, here’s a recent Facebook post about them. Just when I thought they had outgrown the kiddie pool, they invented a new game they call “Fast Turtle”.Fast Turtle

This is embarrassing. My students in Cell and Molecular Biology are working harder than ever and my time spent in SCALE-UP are some of the happiest hours of my day. Each week, the students validate the pedagogy. Give students the keys and they will drive. They will take you on an educational journey you could never plan or even imagine. So what is the matter? Well, and this is not the first time I’ve done this, I decided to bring these progressive educational practices to my other students – my third grade Sunday School class.

The topic was virtue, which seemed both fuzzy and dry for a third grader. I wanted them to own virtue, to taste it. But how do to that with a group of little rowdies who have been known to draw Indiana Jones and Tony Hawk into the Nativity scene. Then I had my inspiration… superheroes.

I told the class that they were going to create their own superheroes today. Their superhero could have any superpower they wanted, but they also had to possess a virtue. The rule was that to retain the superpower, the  hero had to consistently exercise his or her virtue. Lose the virtue, lose the power. What a lesson plan! I was enabling my students to construct knowledge .. and virtue,  in the most tangible of ways. It would be active learning at its best.

The activity started well enough. We brainstormed an impressive list of virtues – honesty, integrity, generosity, faith, etc…. as well as a starter set of superpowers – the ability to fly, to become invisible, to shape shift. We had all the bases covered. Then I handed out the paper and markers and my class got busy.  They worked themselves up into quite a fervor of creativity and virtue.

After they finished, it was time to share. Sharing time started out well enough. The first superhero was a shapeshifter who was always kind. The next was “butterfly girl” who could fly but never told a lie. Then it was Billy’s  turn. (His name has been changed for his mom’s sake). His superhero was kind, honest, brave, faithful and generous. “That is excellent Billy”,  I said. “But what is his superpower?” “Sonic farting”, Billy replied. I was sure I hadn’t heard him correctly so I asked him to repeat himself. “SONIC FARTING”, he said in a superhero-sized voice. This was wrong, terribly wrong. I’d been to many seminars on active learning, even presented at some myself. No one ever discussed what to do when your student chose sonic farting as a superpower. I had to think fast. “Billy”, I said. “I’m sorry but there is no way that your superhero could be virtuous while using that superpower. You’ll have to think of something else.” “But, Miss Jill,” Billy said. “Instead of killing bad people, my superhero just stuns them with his gas and they are powerless.” What could I say? He had me.

So big kids,  please be patient with me this week. I may be a bit more hesitant than I usually am about handing over the reigns of learning. I don’t want to stifle anybody, but I’ve had a long week and it’s only Sunday. So please be gentle with me. Otherwise, I might have to unleash one of my superpowers on you.

I realize this is not a novel topic. Books have even been written on the subject. Much of the controversy tends to revolve around the fact that Rosalind Franklin provided the crystallographic evidence that grounded Watson and Crick’s model for the structure of DNA. Not to mention the questionable way these data may have come into W and C’s possession, not to mention, the treatment Franklin received as a woman in science. These issues remain important even today, but I do not think I have anything new to add to that discussion.

My current deliberation about whether or not W & C deserved the Nobel Prize focuses on a much simpler question: did they work hard enough to earn the Nobel Prize? Many accounts, including Watson’s own Double Helix, paint a charming picture of gentlemen who spent leisurely days in conversation with colleagues at King’s College, roaming the halls until happy hour, when they would hit the pub and talk some more. In every picture I have ever seen of Watson and Crick, they look so relaxed, almost languid. Which is why I am questioning their right to the prize. Did Watson and Crick work hard enough to deserve the prize? Did they suffer?

I realize that I am an experimentalist, a bench scientist who produces tangible stuff as evidence of a productive day’s work in the lab. Gels, mutant embryos, proteins that took blood, sweat and tears to generate in microgram quantities. As a scientist, I have suffered. Watson and Crick were theoreticians. I collaborate with theoreticians. They do not get their hands dirty or handle radioactivity. They tend to dress better than I do. However, they also tend to spend 48 consecutive hours without leaving their computer terminals, subsisting on coffee and stale donuts, and spinning out reams of parameter sets, bifurcations graphs, and code. In other words, they suffer.

In my high school year book, I wrote of three things to which I aspired. One was to win the Nobel Prize. I am pretty sure that is not going to happen. For years, I berated myself for not working harder. Another experiment, another paper, another grant. I matured enough to no longer covet the prize, but I still had my heart set on doing something BIG in science. No matter how much data I produced, I vowed to double my effort and produce even more the next week. I loved my work, but I also suffered.

Looking back, I now wonder if I should have learned something more from W & C than just the fundamentals of semi-conservative replication. Maybe I should not have worked harder, but possibly just a little less “hard”.

The creative process requires sufficient space and ATP. I am not sure the present scientific culture in the US and many other industrialized nations fosters the sort of thought and collaboration that Watson and Crick brought to bear on one of the most challenging problems of the 20th century. In a world of “publish or perish” there is little time for wandering the halls to chat with colleagues let alone for drinking beer.

We are week 4 into the semester and I can see the fervor for science rising in a subset of my students. This stuff is amazing and they want to be a part of it. I feel an obligation to keep them grounded and I do so with the reality check components of my assignments. “Calculate the cost of the experiment you just proposed.” “What are the ethical implications of the discoveries we just discussed?” “How long would this take you to do?”
But some cowardice remains when it comes to sharing some of the harshest realities of life as a biomedical scientist. Do I tell them about the old boys network and how hard it is for a young scientist to get started? Do I tell them about the esteemed scientists who troll scientific meeting looking for ideas to steal? Do I tell them about spending three sleepless months writing and rewriting ones best ideas ever only to find out six months later that the grant proposal was judged so poor as to be “unscorable”? No, I don’t think I want to tell them about that. Instead, I think I’ll tell them about Joe.
I met Joe in 2002. I was a young assistant professor selected to give a talk at a conference at the Cold Spring Harbor Labs. The Nobel Prize had just been awarded in our field and two of the three laureates were scheduled to attend the meeting. My work was edgy, risky, novel to be sure, or so I thought. This was the work that would make me famous…. or at least get me tenure. Then  I read the abstract of the presentation scheduled back-to-back with mine. To be presented by some post doc named Joe. It was nearly the same set of experiments as mine! Who was this Joe guy and what right did he have inhabiting the same scientific world as me?
To make a long story short, I went to that meeting with my fists up, ready for a fight. I sought out this Joe guy (or he sought out me) and it took all of about 10 minutes to remember that a scientific competitor was not necessarily an enemy, but someone who was passionate about the same scientific questions as one’s self. Over the course of the conference and a few late night discussions over beers, Joe and I bonded. When one of the laureates snubbed both of our talks, we became scientific soul mates.
I have known Joe for nearly a decade now. We have reviewed each other’s papers, and I value his criticism above that of all others. He is a superb scientist. After the first encounter, whenever we were both invited to present at a conference, we would consult each other to coordinate our presentations. No, not matching outfits, but we tried to make the most of the collective time we were allotted to tell a compelling story of the science and the approach to science in which we both so deeply believed. Over the years, Joe and I have discovered that we share a love of teaching and care as much about our students as we do our publications. And we care about people, and the planet. I can’t remember the last time I thought of Joe as a competitor. Joe is my friend and friendships like these make up for all the other things that I didn’t want to tell my students.