Freshman Biology and Creativity!

Teaching is often its own reward, but also has its compensatory challenges.  The two main courses I teach (introduction to cell and molecular biology for freshman biology majors, and microbiology for junior and senior biology majors) have different audiences, different challenges, and different joys.

I know that helping students to engage the topics in class through "different eyes" and different strategies can help improve retention and outcomes (meaning exams, on one level).  One method to accomplish that is to encourage students to approach concepts from class based on their interests, using their own skill sets.  I find that most students have impressive talents and special interests that we just don't find out about within the context of a crowded introductory course.  

Nothing motivates students quite like points (he said, cynically), so I often offer "extra credit" for "creative" projects in some of my classes.  This has created some wonderful products in the past, as can be seen in my freshman course last Spring here, and my microbiology course last Fall here.

This Spring, I offered my freshman biology students the same "deal."  They had to talk about their project with me first, to get verbal approval.  Then I needed them to write a one page proposal, to lay out the basic parameters and concept of the project.  I did both of these things to keep students from doing something overwhelmingly last minute (which is in my opinion non-optimal in two ways:  last minute efforts are generally underwhelming, and I also worry that the project might take away from their studies in general).  

The results in the past have been gratifying (as seen in the prior links), and this Spring was no different.  Here are some examples of what these students can do, when they are in the "driver's seat" of their studying and preparations for final exams.  Also note that, for every project, the act of putting these projects together helps students with concepts central to my introductory course. This approach helps the students in an enjoyable and positive manner.

It works.

First, a "piratical" approach to a dihybrid cross that would make Mendel smile.  I hope.

I also had two students who were interested in what I had presented about endosymbiosis, and followed up with Elysia, the chloroplast harvesting sea slug.  In their hands, this topic became a children's book, as you can see from the following two sample pages.

Several students became fascinated by mitosis and meiosis (and well they should!).  One student "cross-stitched" her version of mitosis (very "crafty" as my late mother would have said) as can be seen here. 

Another created a flip book (I am still trying to create a YouTube video to demonstrate, but cannot get the angle quite correct) showing meiosis in action.

Another student created a fun "mini-comic book" about Mendel as her project.  The student pointed out to me, correctly, that the founder of genetics was born "Johann" and only took "Gregor" as a friar in his religious order. 

There was a great deal of creative writing that appeared in this year's "creative projects" offering. Here is a poem about "mitochondrial love" and central metabolism.

  
Another student created an ode to a phospholipid that I think emphasizes some important points.

One student came up with a charming idea I had not anticipated. She told me that she loved the idea of "visual puns" involving biology.  This student created a series of cartoons that mix humor and first year biology pretty well. 

For example, a "Barr Body" takes on a whole new meaning in this student's artistic vision:

 And don't get me started about cell phones in class:

Another student had a more traditional artistic bent, and created this lovely piece of art on canvas that I will hang in my office or laboratory:

I'm not usually surprised by student choices with this kind of assignment, but one student created a "bingo" game that one can use to create a dihybrid Punnett Square.  That is certainly one approach to creating a random selection of alleles during gamete formation!  She included lots of apparatus and instructions.  I can't wait to try it out! 

Another rather shy student wrote a fun poem about the ribosome, that emphases the basic structure and function.

One student asked to do something more "short story"-"creative writing" for her project.  In particular, she wanted to write about Rosalind Franklin.  What the student produced is a ghost story with a slapstick edge.  Here is an excerpt:

Another student had quite an interest in 1930s Gothic literature, such as that of H.P. Lovecraft.  For her project the student produced an analysis---1930s style---of some rather odd families in the H.P. Lovecraft universe, complete with pedigree analysis.  

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah-nagl fhtagn  

Which brings us to some more...theatrical...extra credit productions.  First, three of my students decide to rap a bit about mitosis:
  

Here is their lyric sheet, exactly as they presented it to me.

Another student tried her hand at also being raptastic about mitosis, as you can hear in this audio file:

I don't know how to add an overall cover image, so this is the only way I could determine to upload audio to this blog!  Apologies for the kludge-y approach.  Here are the lyrics to the rap, anyway:

And finally, two students with traditional musical talents put together a pretty fun parody, and do their best to emote for the camera...about mitosis.

Well, I hope that the "creative extra credit" project had some positive aspects for the students.  I know that I was impressed by skills and interests among the students, aspects of them about which I was unaware! And if this kind of project helps the students prepare for their final exam next week, all the better.

I will leave the students with a microbial "good luck" wish, as you can see:

And I recorded this on the last day of class.  I like to think they were clapping because they enjoyed some of the class, not simply that it was over!

I hope you enjoyed this post, as well.  I'll keep trying to merge their creative sides with their studious sides in my classes, never fear!  Give it a try in your classrooms, educators---the students always surprise and impress me!

Art and Biology Work Well Together!

Well, my freshman-level Biology 111 course ("The Unity of Life") is now officially over at the University of Puget Sound, leaving only the final exam. Gulp. As usual for the class, there were high points and points that...well...could have gone better.  But isn't that true of most things in life?

As I plan out the cumulative final exam (double gulp!) and begin thinking about summer research with students, and my classes in the Fall (still far away, but the glittering battlements of those challenges are visible across the summer months before me), I like to reflect a bit about the semester past.

One thing that I particularly enjoyed this semester was working a bit with Katie McKissick, better known of as "Beatrice the Biologist."  Katie is a teacher/artist/science enthusiast, and we share a similar quirky sense of humor (I don't know that she would find that observation a compliment, by the way...sorry, Katie!).

Katie's artwork is awesome (and I don't often employ that unfortunately overused word), and you should check it out for its mixture of humor, accuracy, and ability to provoke some pretty deep thinking.

During the past semester, I was able to commission a bit of artwork from Katie, twice.  You see, I am trying to soften her up as a possible illustrator for a book project I have in mind (I'm thinking of calling this future endeavor "Matters Microbial" after the famous mathematics book, or even "Microbial Supremacy"). Not that she needs my help in that whole book-writing area, incidentally:  do check out her insanely great (miss you, Steve Jobs) book "What's In Your Genes?" that mixes good information with her own unique artwork.  Here is a peek of Katie's view of genetics, and her book.

A must read for genetics fans.

Getting back to Biology 111, I first commissioned Katie to create a piece of artwork demonstrating that students---even while gently dozing in class---are actually quite busy on a molecular level. Heck, they are veritable overachievers, as Katie puts it!

She wrote about the artwork on her blog, here.  

I don't know about you, but I intend to use the phrase "It's ATP go time!" often because of this cartoon.  I like this more than the more often seen "On a cellular level, we are all quite busy" meme, because it really does employ some concepts from class directly!  So there is education in the artwork, which makes Katie's cartoons of genuine pedagogical value, I think.

One of my big interests in biology is how we are more communities of organisms rather than simply one creature.  Just as the poet John Donne wrote that "No man is an island," I am with Thomas Miller, as seen in this slide from one of my microbiology lectures.

Indeed, we are metaorganisms or superorganisms, as Margaret McFall-Ngai and her collaborators suggest:  collections of myriad organisms that make up the "whole" that we visualize as "the" organism.  We are "crowdsourced" organisms, in a manner of speaking.

In any even, I have become extremely interested in how parasites and symbionts can alter the behavior of their hosts, often in outlandishly cool ways.  Here is a very serious book on the topic, and here is a nice overview with great examples.  Now, this topic will be the focus of a freshman writing seminar I am teaching next Fall (triple gulp), but I find it really grabs student attention.  

In Biology 111, I reminded students how mitochondria and chloroplasts were once bacteria, and how eukaryotic cells and symbionts have shaped one another over evolutionary time. But I do hint at the students that some microbes alter the behavior of their hosts.  

Because it is beyond cool. That's just how I roll:  I cannot help but enthuse over the weird and wonderful in biology, and I do not apologize for my excitement over those things!

So with some communication, and some back and forth, Katie came up with the following:

Katie blogged about this illustration here.

The cartoon brings up the question: who is in control?  As I often tell my long-suffering microbiology students, there are about ten times more bacterial cells in and on you than...well, you.  So who is speaking?  Doc Martin or the microbial aspects of that metaorganism?!  Microbial Democracy Now:  One Cell, One Vote!  It's not science fiction; the numerical superiority of microbes is fact.  

And the idea of behavior of an insect controlled by a nematode worm is accepted fact.  And the idea of worms' behavior controlled by a bacterium also a fact (and the study of weird and wonderful Wolbachia is SO worth your time, by the way---Seth Bordenstein's lab is a great place to start).  And the concept of a bacteriophage altering how the bacterium works is true, as well.  What's next?  IS elements inside the bacteriophage DNA?

So IS elements control phage, phage controls bacteria, bacteria control worms, worms control insect...  

It makes you wonder if any of our behavior is controlled by parasites?  And perhaps it is!

In any event, my interactions with Katie over the past semester remind me of the emergent properties that occur when science and art mix:  both benefit.  I hope that my students felt that way.  Ditto Katie. 

So, educators:  try to use artistic approaches in the classroom or in your laboratory.   I know that I have some new insights and approaches, courtesy of this synergy.  Thanks, Katie!

Happy Birthday to my Brother, Jack...

I have to say "happy birthday" to my big brother Jack, though I am sadly a couple of days late. Like the saying goes: time does not fly; it flees. Jack Sevard Martin, Jr's birthday is May 1st (which is amusing, as my brother has ever been the Cold Warrior). May 1st used to be celebrated with parades and tanks and missile launchers from the Eastern Bloc.  

Now, we can celebrate my brother!

Growing up, I always doubted myself.  That was courtesy of my late and much missed mother's psychological Amishness; she was always so worried that her sons would be egotistical.  The result was that I am extremely uncomfortable with self-promotion of any form.  And my path through academia has not been, um,  simple and smooth. 

My brother Jack never doubted me. Ever. Perhaps he projected his own hopes and dreams onto me, but that didn't matter. My brother never---not once---said anything to take me down a peg, and always thought better of me than the more mundane reality. This isn't all bad. I believe it encouraged me to rise above whatever I was doing, to try to do better. No matter the reverses or difficulties, my brother's belief in and support of me was constant and unyielding. To this day, I want to be the person Jack sees when he looks at me.

My brother also insisted I learn more than my teachers required in school. Much more. It was my brother who taught me history, not my teachers in elementary school, junior high school, or high school. My brother bought me Prescott's "The Conquest of Mexico" to teach me not just history, but how Americans in the 19th Century viewed history and the world. We went over the journals of Captain Cook and his expeditions together.  My brother had me read Orwell and Churchill and Sun-Tzu and Huxley.  And he discussed these works with me, often.  

Let's not leave out his love of Gothic literature, ranging from Poe to H.P. Lovecraft; from Stephen King to Algernon Blackwood.  I still have the books he bought for me by these and other authors.

From my brother and his teaching, I learned about the bravery of Lincoln, the biting wit of Disraeli, and the perfidy of Wilson (seriously, look up Woodrow Wilson's record---I never heard any of that in school). From Jack, I learned about  Tamerlane and Genghis Khan and Shaka Zulu and William Wallace. My brother nurtured my interest in space and in science with books, discussion, and historical and political viewpoints.

He was teacher and brother and confidant. No one could ask for a better brother.  Jack is six years older than I am, but he was much more than my big brother.

This next bit says it all, though Jack claims not to remember it in his innate modesty.

I was 21 years old, a senior at UCLA, applying to graduate school. I didn't have a stellar GPA, and felt I couldn't get into a Big Name school. What would my brother know about that? He had been a political science/economics major, with a degree in law. Anyway, we went to dinner, and Jack asked me where I was applying to Ph.D. programs. I told him.

"What about Stanford or Harvard?" he asked me.

"C'mon, Jack, I'm not that good."

Jack steepled his fingers, sounding a bit like the character Niles from the old television show "Frasier."

"So you think you suck, right?" he asked.

"Well..." I replied.

"But if you are all that bad, what do you know about who they will accept or not?"

I hemmed, I hawed. I protested about the cost.

"Okay," he said, producing a checkbook. "How much?"

So with my pedestrian GPA, modest research background from Winston Salser's lab at UCLA, and an admittedly pretty good set of GRE scores, I applied to ten schools.  Jack insisted I apply to three "safety schools" where I felt I had a shot, three "next level" schools to aspire toward, and four "better than me" schools (where I felt I had little chance of being admitted).

I got into all them, and ended up choosing between Stanford and Yale. I will never forget the look of pride of my father's face when I showed him the list of acceptances, but I will also never forget my brother Jack's half-smug expression to me of "I told you so."

I owe all that to my brother Jack.

Whenever things were good, Jack celebrated with me. When things were bad, he supported me and helped me explore a way out of my difficulties. Jack never, ever gave up on me, and always believed in me. When he faced horrible reverses (the death of his much-missed wife Sonia, endless trouble at work), he never dumped on me. Jack was always most concerned about me. I honestly think that I have the better end of our relationship as brothers. And I'm not complaining. 

 I can talk with my brother Jack about anything.

I can never repay my brother for his love and support. But I can recognize him for those traits, and point out that anyone who wishes him ill will have to go through me...and I am not easy to push aside.  The world needs many Jack S. Martin, Jr.s. I would argue, in fact, that they need more of him than need more of me!

No one could have a better or more loyal friend. And I got to experience Jack as his little brother!  Here is a photograph taken of us together, in November of 2013, during his last visit.

Happy birthday, Jack.  Talk with you soon, big brother.