Scholarship is essential to faculty to keep our brains “fresh” and to keep us up-to-date in our fields. I feel that to be the best faculty member one can be, we need to keep learning. One of the best ways to keep learning is through research. Scholarship also helps us be better faculty through reminding us that learning and doing new things is difficult. Scholarship can keep us humble. It also continues to teach us to be both hopeful and tenacious.

I will give more details about my specific scholarship in the mevalonate pathway and education research pages. However, before talking about specifics, I want to address how this work has molded me as a faculty member. Scholarship in both the areas of Discovery and Teaching and Learning are important to me as I continue on my journey as a teacher and scientist.

Participation in research keeps me learning. If I don’t keep learning, I have a hard time asking my students to learn. The biochemical research my students and I have been doing the last several years has given me the opportunity to learn many new techniques. As we’ve branched into new areas, I have had to stretch and grow. It would have been easier to keep doing the same sort of experiments, but if that had been the case, we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to learn new things.

Participating in the scholarship of teaching and learning has stretched me even more. I had to learn about a whole new style of research. Learning about the design of social research has meant I have had to go to others. I have also had to learn a lot about social statistics and when results are significant. This has reminded me what it is like to learn something brand new, not just growing out of a field I have studied for many years.

The last several years of research have helped keep me humble. While I have had some good results in my educational research, my biochemical research has been a struggle. My educational research has reminded me that I certainly do not know everything and still need the help of others. My biochemical research has reminded me that things do not always work just because I want them to.

Working in research has reminded me of the importance of being both hopeful and tenacious. This has been particularly true in my biochemical research. While we have gotten several negative or unclear results over the last several years, that doesn’t mean that the next experiment will not work. It just means going back to the drawing board and seeing what changes we can make.

One last way that I feel that research really molds me is in working with research assistants. Many areas of this portfolio overlap due to the nature of this job. But some of my most important times in the lab are working with undergraduates in my lab. Teaching them about research and learning from them as they introduce new ideas is a key part of being a researcher.