Molecular & Cell Biology Undergraduate Program Wins Accolades

July 30, 2002

Adapted from an article in the MCB Transcript, Vol. 5 No. 1.

For three years running, the university has recognized Molecular & Cell Biology (MCB) professors for their outstanding efforts in undergraduate education. In May, Gary Firestone (Cell & Developmental Biology) and Caroline Kane (Biochemistry & Molecular Biology) were each awarded one of the five 2002 College of Letters & Science Awards for Distinguished Research Mentoring of Undergraduates. Last year Caroline Bertozzi (Biochemistry & Molecular Biology), who has a joint appointment with Chemistry, won the university's coveted Distinguished Teaching Award. And Nilabh Shastri (Immunology) won it the year before that.

Distinguished Teaching Award winner Carolyn Bertozzi discusses biochemistry with a student.

MCB, it seems, is giving the lie to the conventional wisdom that a department can't be tops in research and teaching at the same time. Since recipients of the teaching and mentoring awards are chosen largely based on input from the undergraduate students them selves, MCB must have some very satisfied customers. What's the secret? It turns out it isn't any one thing but a combination of factors that are winning the recognition of the University and the appreciation of the students. "If we excel at anything, it's giving students research experience," says Regan Ronayne, who supervises the MCB Undergraduate Affairs Office. This year 68% of MCB majors were doing research either in labs on campus or at other local institutions, including Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and Children's Hospital in Oakland.

Firestone, who is head of undergraduate affairs for the department, has always been an ardent proponent of exposing undergraduates to research, in part because of his own experience. "Doing research is one of the few things I remember from college," Firestone says. He calls it the biggest factor in his choice of career.

Firestone's award-winning mentoring works on a team model in which undergrads, grad students and postdocs collaborate on a project. Within six months even the most inexperienced members of a team are familiar enough with the techniques to design their own experiments and contribute actively to the project. Undergrads are no exception and co-author roughly half of the papers Firestone publishes. "They are independent members of the lab in all senses of the word," he says.

Promoting access to research opportunities has been one of Caroline Kane's top goals as well, and her efforts earned her two awards this spring. In addition to the mentoring award, she received a citation from the Academic Senate now known as the Henkin award. It was first given to math professor Leon Henkin in 2000 for his commitment to students from groups underrepresented in math and science.

Many groups count as underrepresented in science, Kane says—students of color, Latino students, women, low-income students—and the projects she has taken on have sought ways to give a leg up to those with fewer role models and personal connections in the world of science.

In 1991, with a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Kane, Corey Goodman and John Matsui set up the Biology Fellows Program, which awards competitive stipends to undergraduates, especially to students whose financial need would make such work difficult without pay. Since then she has taken on a number of other programs with related objectives. The Biology Scholars Program, begun in 1992 and directed by Matsui, provides academic support and guidance for students from underrepresented groups entering science. The Berkeley Transfer Consortium works with three community colleges to maximize students' chances of being accepted as transfers to UC. There are several others as well. Kane says she has only recently begun to say no to new projects for lack of time.

MCB also has a respectable number of Distinguished Teaching Award (DTA) recipients. Shastri, who received one in 2000, is in some ways a traditionalist. He says he doesn't go in for whiteboards or PowerPoint, but keeps a small red pail of colored chalk in his office that he takes to every lecture. "Chalk is my tool," he says. Teaching runs in the family. His mother taught Hindi and his father Sanskrit in India, and although the subject matter is different, all teaching is the same, Shastri says. "The goal is to make students feel like they want to know, rather than just to give them a description."

One trick to doing this is to relate the material to daily life. Shastri once saw a bone marrow donor drive in Sproul plaza, so he worked a discussion of tissue compatibility into the class that day. He showed them why, for example, people of minority groups have a very limited pool of donors to draw on. "Then they could walk by the bone marrow donor drive themselves and think about it," he says.

Firestone, who was a 1995 DTA winner, says he structures his lectures with the principle aim of making science exciting. He avoids encyclopedic detail in hopes of instilling students with the desire to learn more. Often they get the chance right in class. "Students are a vital part of the classroom. I'd rather lecture a little less and let them ask questions," he says. Jasper Rine (1997) and Caroline Bertozzi (2001) have also won the teaching award.

Award or no, professors agree that good teaching would be impossible without the graduate students. As teaching assistants, they handle lab classes and discussion sections, and are generally in much more intimate settings with the students. Most were recently undergraduates, giving them insight into the challenges of learning biology that their charges face. "Most of the TAs really care and put a lot of effort into it," says Robert Beatty (Immunology). In fact, several of his TAs have told Beatty they chose Berkeley specifically because they wanted teaching exposure. MCB programs at many other universities do not offer grad students the chance to teach.

Despite all the great classes, no undergraduate would have an easy time navigating through Berkeley if it weren't for the Undergraduate Affairs Office (UAO). Students can be seen lining up outside the door of 2083 Valley Life Sciences Building all semester long, particularly around registration time. All 1300 MCB majors are required to stop in for advising before they register, but any student with an interest in MCB is welcome. Ronayne and her staff of three counselors answer every question from "What can I do with this major?" to "How can I work in study abroad?"

The UAO is also a place for students to turn when things go wrong—a crisis in the family that takes them away from their studies, for example. "We get involved in some pretty heavy stuff," says Ronayne. "They come to us with personal issues because they know we take an interest in them."

To some extent, the quality of MCB's undergraduate program comes down to the undergrads themselves. Every year at Cal Day, the university holds a campus-wide open house designed to attract the best and the brightest from California's high schools to Berkeley. Cal Day falls on the third Saturday in April, right between the time acceptance letters go out and the day prospective students must decide where to go.

Beatty coordinated the MCB open house this year with David Presti (Neurobiology), who teaches the very popular course "Drugs and the Brain" through the College Courses program. At Cal Day, they ran tours and laboratory demonstration. Around 300 visitors came to the MCB information session, and many more than that wandered through the lab classrooms to see DNA in a tube or to try their hand at streaking out bacteria.

Part of the purpose, says Beatty, is to let them know that to be serious about the MCB major, they have to start taking prerequisites like calculus and chemistry in their first year. But it's also to help the students decide whether MCB is the right place for them. Both of the current undergrads who spoke to prospectives at Cal Day this year were students whose introduction to the department at Cal Day years ago clinched their choice of major, Beatty says.

Whatever draws students to the department, whether it's a great lab experience or a Shastri chalk talk, MCB remains one of the largest majors on campus. No one should be surprised if the awards keep rolling in.

Photo: Peg Skorpinski