Two science deans on the ups and downs of teaching

April 7, 2025

by Alexander Rony

Deans maintain heavy workloads and busy calendars, so colleges tend to excuse them from teaching.

At UC Berkeley’s College of Letters & Science, however, two deans increased their course load this year. Steven Kahn, head of the Division of Mathematical & Physical Sciences, is currently teaching a cosmology course following a fall Freshman Seminar on big science experiments. Dean Richard Harland of the Division of Biological Sciences takes breaks from supervising researchers in his lab to teach developmental biology.

The deans sat down together with UC Berkeley writer Alexander Rony for a conversation on their approaches to teaching, research, and modern educational challenges.

Why did you want to teach this semester?

Richard Harland: I really enjoy my undergraduate classes. I was lucky to grow up in a particularly exciting period of developmental biology. Many of the fundamental problems of how embryos develop have been resolved. I like to talk about the experiments and the characters who did them.

I hope to communicate how you set up an experiment, evaluate the data, and draw conclusions. That's an important life skill.

Steven Kahn: I was eager to get back into teaching physics and astronomy in order to better connect with students. I find the faculty in my division much more devoted to teaching than they were back when I started. It used to be treated like a diversion from research. I find all our junior faculty now are really devoted to teaching. As deans, we read all the academic promotion cases, and I'm floored by what some of our faculty are doing.

Harland: Yeah, it really has changed.

Kahn: I started teaching physics in the early 1980s. Then I became chair of the physics department at Stanford and, shortly after that, director of an observatory. I wasn't teaching for a long time.

Then I came here as dean. I was involved in many more discussions about faculty, courses, and the student experience, so I decided to teach a freshman seminar. It wasn't a huge amount of work, and I had a good connection with students, but it still wasn't completely satisfying. So I decided to teach a real course again.

Our astronomy department is pressed to make their teaching load with the faculty they have, so I went to the astronomy chair and said, “Give me a course. What would be helpful?” She came back with cosmology, which is the best thing I could have asked for. It's this fantastic topic, but I've never taught it before.

How has teaching changed over the course of your careers?

Harland: With remote and hybrid models, students want to have all the materials. A lot of them don't come to class anymore. That's a real problem because they lose that chance to engage with the instructor in the class. We're really wrestling with this as a university.

Looking back, I wouldn't have been able to learn by remote teaching because it's too easy to tune out when you're watching an online presentation. That is one of the big problems we have now.

Kahn: I agree completely. Up until now, I used to teach at the blackboard. I like teaching that way; it was the right pace. But the students want the materials. I now teach from PowerPoint, and I give them the PowerPoint files, but because of that, I've seen the attendance dropping.

Like you, I don't get it because when I was in college, the easiest thing you could do was go to class. It's only three hours a week, and you learn. That was easier for me than reading a book.

They're also a little less communicative in class than they used to be. That's a challenge for us. I've noticed a lot of disagreements about what the new teaching method should be on campus. There are a lot of ideas about more active learning.

Richard Harland, Dean of Biological Sciences (photo by Johnny Gan Chong)

Steven Kahn, Dean of Mathematical and Physical Sciences

How would you assess California's effectiveness at preparing its high school students for college-level science courses?

Kahn: We have a huge problem in math right now. Many calculus students have to retake the class, which creates all kinds of problems. We had a task force on it. I expect most people would conclude that it's the preparation that they're getting in high school. Even though most students had calculus in high school, many still don't know the basics. I understand they also have had problems with beginning chemistry.

Harland: And biology. Anything quantitative.

Kahn: It’s not uncommon for people to turn high school math courses into rote learning. Students can get straight A's then come to college and get blown away. I suspect that happens in physics and biology, too.

Harland: To a lesser extent. In some ways, a lot of biology can be taught without having much previous experience. We're lucky that a lot of the material is pictorial, so it should be easy to engage the students.

Could we improve how we teach at the college level?

Kahn: One of the mistakes I made when I first started teaching was that I taught in the way I would have wanted to hear the material presented when I was a student. It ignored the selection effect that I became a physicist and a faculty member. Most of the students are not going to go that way. I learned a while back that I need to be teaching to the students who are there, not the few who look like I did when I was their age.

In the sciences, historically, we've started at the beginning with ancient material going back hundreds of years. Then, by the time they get to be a seniors, they learn about modern science. That doesn't work anymore. Students get bored before they ever get to the interesting stuff. There's more of an attempt now to bring in modern lessons while you're still teaching the basics.

Have any student interactions surprised you and changed your perspective?

Kahn: I overheard some students acknowledge that they've gotten D’s and C’s in some of the physics classes they’ve taken. I asked them, “Why are you still taking physics courses if you get D's and C's?” This one guy said, “I don't know. I just like it.” There's something charming about that.

There are a lot of students taking advanced courses now without the intention of going on to graduate school. They're just interested in it. It used to be that when you got up to junior- or senior-level physics, the classes were small, and it was mostly people going on to graduate school.

How about you, Dean Harland?

Steven Kahn leans forward with one hand on a podium

Steven Kahn gives a speech at the 2023 L&S Faculty Awards (photo by Keegan Houser)

Harland: The most obvious thing is seeing how many students want to have a research experience on top of their classes — and how difficult it is to get into. One of my postdocs started a boot camp specifically for students who had no lab experience. It takes them through a few weeks of experiments and breaks that activation barrier so they know enough that they can introduce themselves to other labs and be taken more seriously as a candidate.

I wanted to have a rolling program where we recruited students as sophomores — occasionally as freshmen — and by the time they are seniors, they're sufficiently mature and sophisticated technically to help to mentor new students. You have to have the right kinds of introductory experiments. Then, once they've achieved those goals, they can go on to more sophisticated and ultimately independent projects. We've established the program, which can be replicated easily and is not that much work to keep going.

I'm a big fan of the Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program. We advertised for three students and received 200 applications. This really reflects how much demand there is. We have 25 students now, which is getting to be too many.

Dean Kahn, what is your division doing to help undergraduates gain research experience?

Richard Harland sits with one arm leaning on his chair in front of an empty bookcase

Richard Harland in his Durant Hall office in 2024 (photo by Johnny Gan Chong)

Kahn: We used to tell undergraduates, “Sure, you can do research. Just go up to faculty and ask to join their groups.” Most of the time, they are quite welcoming, but the students don't knock on their doors. When they do, faculty will ask, “Well, what are you interested in?” and the students will look at them bewildered, so we need to ease that transition to make it more successful.

Former dean Frances Hellman started MPS Scholars, a program to make the division more welcoming to students and give them a sense of community. One goal is mentoring, but a big piece is undergraduate research. Graduate schools expect you to have done something beyond classroom work as an undergraduate. Students are eager to get experience, but the various opportunities are somewhat diffused. There are a lot of different acronyms, and it's hard for students to navigate.

MPS Scholars acts as a broker. It's an easy thing to know about and join. Staff give them entrées into research. There is money for students who are not able to get paid research positions. Unfortunately, it's still not enough to meet the demand.

There's a lot of student interest in the more theoretical aspects of the physical sciences. Depending on the subfield, there are questions about what undergraduates can actually do. We're trying to get faculty to come up with well-defined projects that can be done by undergraduates. Then, we use postdocs, teaching professors, or graduate students to oversee them.

Harland: On the financial side, we have students from wealthy backgrounds who can afford to indulge themselves in lab research, but there are some who have to work to pay rent. It would be nice if we were able to pay those students. They're working for class credits, of course, but, in the summers, all of my students are paid.

Kahn: Class credit is a different thing. That's at least a fair compensation. But the summer is the main concern. You don't want to only select those students who can afford it. We've been encouraging faculty to only do paid internships and research positions because otherwise, it becomes discriminatory.

What advice would you give a student when deciding what courses to take?

Kahn: One of the things I've learned since coming back to Berkeley is just how complicated it is for a student. It's not simple for them to figure out their classes, even if they know what they're majoring in. I'm hesitant because they have to figure all that out, but students should take what they're interested in. We all say this to them, but I'm not sure they hear.

There are a lot of students doing double and triple majors. I don't personally get why they do that. They have an impression that it improves their chances when it really doesn't. That just makes their job much harder. If you're going to go into a graduate program in molecular and cell biology, for example, the fact that you did a double major with physics probably doesn't make a whole lot of difference.

Do you have any advice for students, Dean Harland?

It's going to be challenging to figure out what to do from all of the possibilities, but I would like [students] to challenge themselves. Really exploit what's available.

Richard Harland

Harland: They're at Berkeley. It's going to be challenging to figure out what to do from all of the possibilities, but I would like them to challenge themselves. Really exploit what's available. If a course looks interesting but has a prerequisite you haven’t taken yet, talk to the professor. You can probably get into the course anyway.

Go to office hours. Professors sit in their offices crying their eyes out because there's nobody there.

[Kahn laughs and nods.]

Take advantage of the possibilities.

Richard Harland's first interview as dean of biological sciences

Richard Harland explained why he came to Berkeley, what it takes to enable top-tier research, how the division serves the state, and what pulled him away from his beloved lab to take on a leadership role.

UC Berkeley’s Chilean partnerships bring cosmic mysteries to light

For Steven Kahn, dean of UC Berkeley’s Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences and former director of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, the trip to Chile was both a homecoming and a validation of years of meticulous planning.

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