Sept. 11, 2007 issue
I came to Eastern Michigan in 1995 from the National Institutes of Health
(NIH), where I had been a post-doctoral researcher. One of the things
that attracted me to EMU was the opportunity to teach. I hadn't been able
to do any teaching at the NIH, and I really missed that part of it.
Eastern gave me the opportunity to balance teaching and research in a
way a lot of other places didn't. For a lot of jobs I interviewed
for, they used a minimal amount of teaching as a selling point, but that
wasn't what I was looking for. I think I may have lost one position because
I asked if I could do more teaching than was required.
I'm a developmental biologist. I study embryonic development, looking
at molecular mechanisms that drive embryonic development. We all start
off life as a single cell, a fertilized egg. Thousands of different cell
types make up one person. The basic question of developmental biology
is how do we go from that one original cell to trillions of cells and
thousands of different cell types that are so well ordered and organized?
It's a very complex process, but an incredibly elegant one. One thing
that I always try to get across to my students is the beauty and the elegance
of biological systems.
I really enjoy interacting with students in the classroom and in my research
laboratory. At the introductory level, many of the students
are so eager to learn, it makes the job easy. In my upper
level classes and in my research laboratory, the students
have a lot of curiosity and are highly motivated. They
ask a lot of really good questions, which forces me to
stay on my toes. One thing I find interesting is that I
also learn from my students. Students bring their own perspectives
to a class so, very often from them, I learn a different
way of looking at things, which can give me new ideas.
The biology department at EMU, I think, is very special. It's one of
the things that keeps me here. I've got a tremendous group
of colleagues who are very good at what they do. They're
also very good people. We have a lot of fun, get along
well and help each other out. It's a great place to be.
