Highlights and Reflection
One of the strongest characteristics among the faculty in the Biology Department at ACU is collegiality. This is something that I immediately noticed as I was interviewing at ACU and as a new faculty member. One of my first memories was of hearing one faculty member asking another if he had enough research space and if he did not, he had extra space he could give to him. It struck me as odd because just a few months before I had overheard a loud exchange concerning the same topic as I was walking down the hallway at the university where I was working. In this case, two faculty members (one was my boss) were shouting at one another as they were arguing over who would get a 10 x 20 foot storage space. One even shouted, “I will sue you for this!” I am still amazed by the collegiality at ACU. Faculty members in the Biology Department behave very collegial towards one another, and it breeds more collegiality in me. I feel like I have been on the receiving end of this collegiality more than on the giving.
It is difficult to reflect on one’s own collegiality, but I believe my most collegial moments have occurred within the Biology Department. I have hosted Dead-Day Cookouts at the end of the Spring semesters for the students and faculty. Tom Lee has allowed me to edit a couple of his manuscripts before he submitted them for publication. I was not always able to comment on the science since it is so different from microbiology research, but I could comment on style, grammar, and punctuation. I also hosted a departmental chapel where I shared about my struggles with faith.
Another aspect of collegiality is recognizing the expertise in others. The best example of this is when I desperately needed help revising the phylogenies and analyses in a manuscript. I solicited the help of Josh Brokaw and together we constructed a phenomenal product that even made it on the list of ScienceDirect’s “Top 25 Hottest Articles”. That would not have been possible without our collaboration.
Collegiality is a quality that I continue to strive toward, using my colleagues in the Biology Department as an example.