Educating Tomorrow’s Scientists and Citizens
Gabriele Wienhausen, a long-time advocate for students and innovation in education, talks about her new and unique position as the first full time Associate Dean for Education on the UC San Diego campus and some of the educational opportunities and challenges facing the division.
The Division of Biological Sciences and UC San Diego have a long-standing and well deserved reputation for providing students with an excellent education at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Our programs are consistently rated among the best values in the nation. One of the reasons our new dean, Steve Kay, chose to come here was the opportunity to educate people about science at every level, to share with them the excitement of scientific discovery and the potential that discovery holds for solving some of the most crucial issues facing us today.
Our shared vision is no less than to become the top biological division in the nation in both research and education. Being part of this vision is more than exciting to me. I too am passionate about excellence in education. As the vice chair of undergraduate education for the Department of Biology and then founding provost of Sixth College, I have thought deeply about the educational experience in its broadest sense.
As a division we must find time to consider the vision we have for education and to identify the outcomes we want to achieve as we move further into the 21st century. I am looking forward to working with the biology faculty to explore new ways of teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, ways that will enhance our already strong educational programs and build on current models.
With our undergraduate biology majors nearing 5,000, we need to look at innovative ways to teach, to help students integrate their new knowledge and to encourage them to take a proactive approach to their own education. One tantalizing idea worth exploring as a division involves a paradigm shift that would enable us to engage greater numbers of our students in research. The current paradigm involves a student being mentored by a faculty member, a one-to-one relationship. It is an excellent approach that works extremely well. But how can we enhance the research experience for large numbers of students? One possibility is through identifying important research projects going on in our labs that could become part of a classroom experience. Many students would be working as a class on some key aspect of the researcher’s project, manipulating real data that the researcher would use in his or her experiment. The researcher would, in turn, engage the students in seeing how the experimental approach fits into the larger research picture. Thus, the paradigm shifts to “many students—one researcher.”
Another aspect of education that needs addressing is the growing emphasis on mathematical thinking in research. Biology has become a highly data driven science, increasingly reliant on mathematical models. How do we adjust our curriculum so that students are given greater exposure to this type of research? These ideas–the paradigm shift and increased emphasis on mathematical thinking–are reasonable goals for the near future, since neither requires substantial new resources.
Education does not take place solely in the classroom and the laboratory. The environment we create for our students outside the classroom and lab is crucial to their overall educational experience. We need to explore, for example, how to provide more opportunities for our students to learn and practice what are referred to as the “soft” skills–leadership, communication, networking, team building, and time management, to name a few. These skills are crucial for our students to compete successfully for spots in professional schools and to work effectively as members of multidisciplinary teams. They are crucial for success no matter what career a student pursues, whether he or she continues in science, goes into journalism, politics, teaching, or just about any other field.
The division already addresses some of these needs through programs such as the Biological Sciences Student Association. The goal of BSSA is to involve students in identifying, organizing, and implementing programs they believe are important to their overall educational experience. BSSA provides leadership and mentoring opportunities, as well as training in organizing programs and events, networking and communicating with fellow students, faculty, alumni, and others.
We also want our students to use the time and freedom their years with us provide to explore beyond science–to take classes in philosophy, psychology, to study the arts, dance, languages, that is, to leave their comfort zone. This brief time in their lives may be the only chance they have to immerse themselves in a range of disciplines and options, to take chances without needing to worry about the consequences. I believe these experiences contribute significantly to a student becoming the well rounded, informed citizen we want to send out into the world after graduation.
Someone has said, “Our students today are our alumni forever.” We are committed to building lifelong relationships with our students through helping them achieve their educational and career goals as students and then through mutually beneficial interactions with them after they graduate.
To contact Gabriele Wienhausen, e-mail her at: biodeaned@biomail.ucsd.edu.
Contributing Writer: Gabriele Wienhausen
From BioSphere Magazine, 2007-2008 issue, page 27.