The University annually recognizes faculty for exceptional teaching and mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students through the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Awards, believed to be the nation’s oldest prize for undergraduate teaching, and the Faculty Awards for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Mentoring, which honor faculty for their work with graduate students. Two UChicago Biosciences faculty were recognized this year, Graduate Dean, Professor David Kovar and Professor Chuan He.
Quantrell Award
Among five faculty selected for the Quantrell award, Prof. Kovar likens his approach to science and teaching to his love of sports: “I view sports, my science, and mentoring of students in the same light—we need to work together and help each other. That’s the way to make the most progress.”
It’s no surprise that Kovar thinks in terms of cooperation. As a cell biologist, he studies the actin cytoskeleton, a network of proteins that link together to perform all kinds of tasks in the cytoplasm of cells. These networks are incredibly complicated, constantly reconfiguring themselves according to need. Functioning properly requires the perfect combination of many factors that change as networks self-organize and interact with each other—not all that different from a full classroom or a busy lab.
Pulling off that kind of organization is a difficult feat in “Fundamentals of Cell and Molecular Biology,” the introductory course Kovar co-teaches for first-year undergraduates. As an active researcher and Dean for Graduate Affairs in the Biological Sciences Division, Kovar is used to working with Ph.D. students over several years to develop their scientific abilities. With more than 275 students in the fundamentals course, time is precious, and it can be an immense challenge to condense an entire cell biology textbook into a handful of 50-minute lectures.
But the payoff is well worth it, he said: “There is little more rewarding than imparting excitement for a subject to undergraduate students. I realize that I’m far from the smartest person in the room when teaching to our amazing undergraduates at UChicago, but at the very least I can pass along my excitement and enthusiasm for cell biology.”
Graduate Teaching and Mentoring Award
In Prof. Chuan He’s field of chemical biology and biochemistry, advances are made so rapidly that the discipline itself can be completely revolutionized in less than a decade—which is both an opportunity and a challenge.
“Every five to 10 years, you have to reinvent yourself,” he said. “That’s the mentality I want my students to have, so we are constantly exploring new things. If you want your students to think out of the box, you have to create that environment.”
He’s lab is well-known for its liveliness and diversity, bringing together students with backgrounds in different kinds of science and walks of life. With more than 40 trainees, the lab is large by academic standards; He turns that into an advantage by pairing together senior and junior students, as well as those with different strengths.
“I try to have every student on two or more projects so that they can taste different fields of biology or chemistry—which means they are learning new things and producing different results,” he said. “I hope to expose them to the landscape of science. They need to see the entire spectrum and see what excites them the most.”
This balance of collaboration and independence struck his students, who wrote to praise He’s “balance of supportive mentorship and academic freedom.” One noted He’s “ability of getting students excited about a research question and giving them the freedom, guidance and confidence to explore [it]. … I always felt that he trusted me and respected my opinion.”
Despite the volume and scope of He’s work, his students also mentioned his open-door policy and his dedication to furthering their careers by introducing them at conferences and recommending them to write journal reviews or comments in their field.
“Entering Chuan’s lab,” one student wrote, “was, without a doubt, the best decision I have made.”
University announces 2022 winners of Quantrell and Graduate Teaching Awards, Matt Wood et al, UChicago News, May 26, 2022.