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Maddock's classroom style is traditional, eschewing electronic presentations or participatory classroom projects in favor of lectures. She regularly supplements the course material with recent research findings. A talk on chromosome structure, for instance, concludes with new findings about how telomeres at the ends of chromosomes may be involved in cancer. Maddock emphasizes that she is teaching upper-level courses for students who are already interested in biology, and she devotes her energies to developing high-quality lectures that help students focus on what science can do. "The kind of information I have to get across is very detailed. It's very high level, and there's a lot of it." At the end of the semester, the students fill out evaluations and give Maddock high marks for her teaching. "You are very enthusiastic and easy to learn from," one student writes. "Don't become a cynical tenured professor," writes another. "We like you how you are now!" Teaching at Michigan goes well beyond the lecture hall. Assistant professors in biology must counsel undergraduates at least two hours a week. They are encouraged to incorporate undergraduates into their labs—at Michigan, 40 percent of the undergraduate biology majors will work in a laboratory before graduation. "I absolutely love having undergraduates in my lab," Maddock says. "It's a lot of work, but it's fun. I don't feel like this is an extension of my teaching so much as it is a different kind of teaching." Balanced against these academic demands are Maddock's family obligations. She is divorced and shares custody of her two children—Jaren, 5, and Jennette, 10. An undergraduate lives with her, earning free room and board in exchange for several evenings a week of child care. "My rule is that my kids come first," Maddock says. "That doesn't mean that I'm always there when I want to be or when I need to be. It means that if I ever thought I was compromising their happiness or well-being, I'd leave this job." So parent meetings at school, Girl Scout meetings, play auditions, field trips, sick days, and time to color and read and make cookies often take her away from her laboratory and her students. Tenure...grant writing...publishing... research...teaching...children—any one of them is taxing, but Maddock is trying to balance them all. Maddock does not deny that her balancing act frequently becomes shaky. "As an assistant professor, you're on the ladder, but you're just holding on to the bottom rung. You could fall off at any moment." Does it really feel that precarious? Maddock pauses before she responds. "Yes. Yes, in a lot of respects, it does." |
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significant portion of Maddock's life is devoted to working with undergraduates.
Three times a week she lectures about 120 students in molecular biology.
One night a week she teaches a graduate course in cell biology.
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