"I really shouldn't have agreed to do this. This does nothing for my career. I'm too busy this year. I can't take on anything else," Maddock says as she strides briskly down the hall toward Room 1003. Maddock is devoted to teaching. Yet this is the month when the young biologist has two deadlines to apply for grants—including a prestigious R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health—that will keep her genetics laboratory productive for several years. Without grant money, Maddock believes that everything she wants in her professional life is in jeopardy. So why, in the face of that pressure, is she taking time to talk with a group of undergraduates? "They're at the stage where they don't know what they want to do," says Maddock. "I want to signal to them that learning is fun.... This is part of my job, too." This fourth chapter of "Beyond Bio 101" looks at several weeks in the life of Janine Maddock, a new assistant professor at the University of Michigan. It describes the challenge she faces of getting her laboratory off the ground and the balancing act she must perform to squeeze work and family obligations into a single day. Sometimes, as when she works long hours to make progress on grant applications, the balance is precarious. Yet deadlines and rewards are an inescapable part of faculty life. Like biology faculty members across the country, Maddock is on the front lines of undergraduate education. The approaches to biology education described in this book will not take hold unless she and others adopt and extend them. Her professional life exemplifies the dilemma faced by faculty members everywhere who care deeply about undergraduate education but are pulled in a dozen other directions every day. Her life is a whirlwind of teaching, grant writing, research, family, and other responsibilities. She is committed to her students and to teaching well. But to be in a position to teach, she must get the grant support she needs to do research. Maddock's situation as a new assistant professor at a research-intensive university is especially intense. Indeed, the difficult period described here will ease with Maddock receiving a major grant that provides a career boost and breathing room to pursue her research. But all biology faculty—including those engaged in teaching at small colleges—are familiar with the kinds of pressures described in this chapter, and the starkness of those pressures provides a useful reality check for anyone seeking to improve the quality of undergraduate science education. How can faculty members receive training for teaching? Who will make needed changes? Will faculty members be rewarded for making those changes? And, most important, where will they find the time? |
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he clock is ticking, and Janine Maddock is on her way to Room 1003.
Maddock could be—and probably should be—elsewhere tonight. But she has
agreed to spend two hours talking to the undergraduate biology club at the
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor about her career as a scientist.
