Robert Kuhn–Teaching Statement 2000-01
Lecturer, Biology

I am honored to be nominated for an Excellence in Teaching Award. To learn in this way that my efforts have touched lives is a wonderful affirmation of my labors. It is rewarding to know that students who take my class appreciate it as a challenge and an opportunity.

I can't say that I come to teaching with any conscious method or plan, but through six years of teaching at UCSC, I have found a few things that seem to work. If I have any method at all, it would have to be a deep-felt enthusiasm for the science I teach. Biological organisms have myriad subtle ways in which they bend the chemical and physical world to fill their needs. Millions of chemical compounds are synthesized by plants, animals, or bacteria for some mysterious purpose or another. The challenge of discovering those processes is a lifelong journey and I seek to bring my students along with me, have them share the dazzling things I've stumbled across, and help them continue their own trips into the world of science.

I share with my students my feeling that we have the rare privilege to study science at the university level and we have a responsibility as citizens to make the most of our opportunity to comprehend science and its implications for society. With so many local and national decisions depending on potential techno-fixes, we, as scientifically trained citizens, will have an important role as family and community resources throughout our lives.

I believe it is my task to teach the whole student and I structure my teaching around weaving a web of knowledge that brings to bear all of their background in math, chemistry, physics, writing and other areas. In biology, we have many students who are interested in science but have the impression that it is not a "hard" science. One of the challenges I face in my teaching is to help them overcome their math phobia and embrace mathematics and the other sciences. I seek to help them view the other disciplines as valuable tools they can bring to bear on a problem, not onerous courses they need to take before they can study something interesting.

During the academic year I teach a lab course, which puts me in the enviable position of getting to know my students very well, and it opens avenues in teaching not available in large classes. For example, the principal means of evaluating student performance is through written lab reports, a formidable enough workload when teaching a small class, impossible in a large one. Getting away from the multiple-choice format, I insist that they actually make real sense of an experiment. It is far too easy to walk into an exam with an incomplete understanding of a concept, survive the exam with a passing score, and walk out still believing you know it. It is virtually impossible to sustain that illusion in a written report. To illustrate my expectations, in the first lecture of a quarter I typically play a tape of a Bach piano concerto recorded for me by a colleague in the music department. It is played 98% correctly-a performance most students in science would envy on a final. But because of the deliberate 2% errors, it sounds awful. My goal is to help my students aspire to a higher standard, perhaps as high a standard as found in music.

In the teaching lab, I seek to establish a relaxed, friendly atmosphere. I have no trouble establishing a mentor-student relationship and prefer to reduce the intimidation factor, so my students call me by my first name. I attempt to further the atmosphere of approachability by encouraging attendance at office hours and I keep open an active and prompt communication line by e-mail. My course evaluations frequently cite students' appreciation for this open access.

At the beginning of each lab period I sit on the desk and guide my students, with leading questions, through an explanation of the important aspects of the day's experiment. I learn the students' names early and reinforce my memory with a seating chart and use their names as I guide the discussion. This question-answer give-and-take encourages them to come to lab prepared and it helps me find the places where the lab manual or their background coursework leaves gaps to be filled. This part of the day must be done rather carefully because, by putting a student on the spot, I walk a fine line between gentle encouragement and causing embarrassment or resentment. Often, it takes several questions, each breaking a problem into smaller parts, before we find a place to start our conversation.

For some reason, the act of computing a dilution of a solution gives my students fits, though they did it in their chemistry labs. Frequently only one student of a pair is carrying the burden of the computation, or of the entire experiment. I address this issue with lots of practice, of course, but also with a "mid-course correction," a reshuffling of lab partners. This social experiment has the effect of encouraging students to step forward in the new pairing to carry their share of the effort. And it gives them someone new to call during the late-night analysis phase.

My goal is to encourage in students a sense of professionalism and self-reliance in the lab and in their studies in general. At the same time, I try to put as many tools into their hands as possible. I've developed a large course Web site that has animations, practice problems, and an extensive glossary of terms relevant to the experiments, the equipment, and the underlying science. Students can also find writing tips for troubleshooting their lab reports. Because the course relies so heavily on the formal, written report for feedback, I've teamed up with the Writing Across the Curriculum program and we now offer writing-intensive credit for our lab course, one of the few "W" courses in the sciences. This gives our students access to writing tutors, another important resource.

Outside the classroom, I take what opportunities I can find to encourage my students and promote the study of science in the community. I serve on the Kresge College Academic Standing Committee, and I give workshops for the Coalition for Student Academic Success (CSAS). I keep an eye out for promising minority students and steer them toward the Minority Biomedical Research Support Program, where they can get further support and mentorship. I serve as a judge at the county Science Fair, have volunteered for the UCSC Speakers Bureau, and write many letters of recommendation. It seems the accessibility in the classroom makes me one of the few teachers my students feel they actually know! I believe they recognize that I am genuinely interested in their education. And I get to share in their happiness and success when I attend graduation as a Fellow of Kresge College.

It would certainly be a lot easier for me, and might generate uniformly warm evaluations, if I gave students all the answers and had them parrot back in a lab report what I've told them. But that would be a disservice to them. I would rather spend the extra time with them and help them work their own way to the data interpretation.

If my students are going to be professionals working in science, they are going to have to rely on their own analyses of data and their own resources. They are going to have to aspire to something better than merely passing a class. I see my job as not to make it easier for them or for myself, and not to "teach to the evaluation," but to insist that my students go through life with their brains engaged. On reading student evaluation forms, it is clear that most students appreciate being challenged and encouraged to do their best work.

Finally, a few words about what I get out of teaching. As a lecturer, a teacher in a research department, I serve on no department committees and have no input into the curriculum. I have no security of employment. The pleasure comes from the students. In lab courses I get constant personal interaction with students in a dynamic, charged atmosphere of experimentation. During a typical lab period we are working on one (or more) experiments, with the attendant technical questions and need for guidance. At the same time, students are working on the interpretation and reports for several other experiments still in the pipeline. At any given moment a student may approach in mid-thought and start in on any topic as if I've been inside her head the whole time. The intellectual stimulation of keeping all the balls in the air at once is engaging and exciting.

When a student gets an insight into a difficult process or completes an experiment and sees a satisfying set of data that nicely tells a story, these "Eureka!" moments are rewarding both to the student and to me for the role I've played in nurturing it. One very rewarding moment for me came in class some time ago when a student asked a question about an experiment. As I paused to frame a careful reply she interjected, "Oh. You're going to make me think, aren't you?"