There Are No Dumb Questions
Jo Handelsman, a plant pathologist who studies the way bacteria
communicate, starts every meeting with undergraduates the same way.
"Everyone come up with a dumb question," she instructs. "They soon
learn that there are no dumb questions."
Just as Handelsman creates an environment where undergraduates feel
safe asking "dumb questions," the new HHMI Professor plans to build an
intensely interactive and supportive undergraduate research group to
conduct research in her lab throughout their college years. She's
looking especially for minorities and women, and she wants science
education majors as well as those majoring in biology. "We will invite
them into the community of science by including them in the
conversation of the laboratory, which can be very intimidating to an
undergraduate," she explains. She hopes that engaging in research and
sharing the thrill of discovery about micro-organisms with each other
and the rest of the research group will draw them to careers in
scientific research.
A professor of plant pathology and co-director of the university's
Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute, Handelsman won
the first Recognition Award from Cabinet 99, a Wisconsin Alumni
Association initiative, for her professional achievement and commitment
to furthering the status of women at the university. Recognizing that
she may be seen as a role model for women in science, Handelsman says,
"Role models are just to let people know that their dreams are
possible. One of my goals is to let girls and young women know that
they don't have to give up being human or female and having fun to be
scientists." She hopes to emulate the influence that bacterial
geneticist Martha Howe had on her during her own student days. "She was
the kind of woman scientist I aspired to be: brilliant, meticulous and
feminine, with a generosity of spirit and a gentle warmth that made her
an incredible mentor. She always had time for her students and
colleagues."
As an HHMI Professor, Handelsman also will reach out to the world
through The Spud
Files, an interactive website she plans to build around the
story of the Irish potato famine. Its goal is to present biology in
sufficient depth to be useful in college courses, yet comprehensible
and interesting to the public. The materials on the website will be
freely available for any teacher to use.
To Handelsman, teaching and research cannot be separated, so she
plans to establish an HHMI Teaching Fellows Program to help graduate
students and postdoctoral fellows improve their teaching skills. She
called the HHMI Professors program "one of the first to acknowledge
that research and teaching aren't at odds. They enhance and enrich each
other. I hope to help researchers become fantastic teachers and see how
that enhances their research."
Jo Handelsman is betting that it will.
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