Med. School professor offers class to freshmen

Associate Professor of Medicine, Molecular Biology and Genetics and Director of the JHMI Microarray Core Facility Forrest Spencer is teaching a class at Homewood this semester as a part of the Gateway Sciences Initiative. The class, which is specifically designed for freshmen, is titled “Genetics, Genomics, and Evolution.” This is the second year the class has been offered.

“Nationally there is an interest in generating freshmen gateway classes that more strongly integrate the process of science with the facts of science. The idea of the Gateway Sciences Initiative is to create courses for students who are interested in science but haven’t decided whether they want to follow that path yet,” Spencer said.

The Gateway Sciences Initiative’s website explains its mission as one to further the study of scientific pedagogy.

“The Provost’s Gateway Sciences Initiative is a multi-dimensional program to improve and enrich learning of gateway sciences at Johns Hopkins University for undergraduate and graduate students ... Our goal is to generate and disseminate evidence of educational excellence to the deans, chairs, directors and faculty who make decisions on curriculum development and instructional resource allocation at Johns Hopkins,” the website states.

The class of 24 students spends two-thirds of classes in lecture and the other third conducting bench work in the Undergraduate Teaching Labs. This variety between traditional class work and independent, hands-on lab work is integral to the course’s goal of combining theoretical and practical aspects of science.

Many students have expressed praise for the course’s curriculum and structure.

“It’s perfect for students who have placed out of General Biology and are looking for a supplementary class that only focuses and elaborates on a few of the topics covered in the Gen. Bio. curriculum. The lab component is especially exciting because we get to work with our own DNA,” freshman Raquel Serruya, who is enrolled in the class, said.

Freshman Michael Guo agreed.

“I think the class material is pretty interesting and useful if your major is related. It supplements stuff I’m learning in other bio classes so I feel like I’m ahead. Also the lab aspect keeps things fresh,” Guo said.

Freshman Matt Brown went so far as to recommend the class to any future freshmen with an interest in Biology.

“I think it’s a very interesting and open learning environment. It challenges the minds of those interested in biology, and it allows for learning from both lectures and labs. I would suggest that incoming freshmen who really like biology should take the class,” Brown said.

Spencer did not begin her career with a focus on teaching. After earning her undergraduate degree at Smith College and her Ph.D. at Harvard, she became an Associate Professor here at the University’s School of Medicine. Her inspiration to teach more intensively came in recent years.

“Most of my career has been spent in research with some teaching ... I studied chromosome structure and function, sources of variation for eukaryotic genomes I worked in budding yeast. About five or six years ago, I became engaged in some outreach to high school students. I was very inspired by them and that has focused my interest in teaching quite a lot,” Spencer said.

This inspiration came from her involvement in a program sponsored by the American Society of Human Genetics that paired researchers with high school teachers in an effort to correct common misconceptions that they had in their classrooms.

“I learned a lot from them about their classrooms and they learned from me. It got me interested in becoming involved in more kinds of activities, and I was invited to help lead the development of a Johns Hopkins secondary site for a project that comes out of Rutgers. [The program] supports high school students and teachers in the analysis of novel genes from small plants,” Spencer said.

In the same spirit of engaging students with the deeper nuances of science, Spencer developed Genetics, Genomics, and Evolution with Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Robert Lieberman.

“This class came from a conversation I had with [Lieberman]. Last year, together, we presented this class for the first time to a group of freshmen. They seemed to enjoy it, and we enjoyed it. It’s wonderful that Johns Hopkins is responding to the natural movement of developing these courses and trying them out. The Gateway Sciences Initiative from the Provost’s office has been instrumental,” Spencer said.

The initial construction of the course presented the difficulty of condensing large and growing amounts of material into a manageable syllabus.

“It’s really fun, but it’s difficult to distill the essential facts and not get distracted. It’s exciting to incorporate current views of how things work. Science is not just in a laboratory; I want to be able to expose [students] to current research and the boundary between what’s known and not known. It’s novel, it’s true discovery and it’s very engaging,” Spencer said.

According to Spencer, the course this spring has remained largely the same as it was in 2013. Since last year, the syllabus has been further streamlined and adjusted to fit the semester.

“The first year you do anything you certainly learn where your blind spots were and what kind of things need to be presented in a strong way. Last year was about establishing learning goals and achieving them on a timetable that fits inside the classroom schedule. That’s really intact. Hopefully were a little more organized and we can maintain our focus and connections in a stronger way,” Spencer said.