Professor Phoebe Rice (Biochemistry and Microbiology) has been recognized for outstanding undergraduate teaching. She is one of 5 faculty members to receive the Quantrell Award this year. The Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Awards are believed to be the nation's oldest prize for undergraduate teaching.
Rice has been teaching “Topics in Biological Chemistry” to students for more than 20 years, and while the subject matter of the course has changed with new tools and technologies over the years, the one thing she always tries to instill is a fundamental sense of wonder.
“I enjoy pointing out things in nature that I think are just amazing and fascinating, and then showing how they work at a very molecular, under-the-hood level,” she said.
Rice tries not to be too prescriptive in the course. There is no set textbook; students are expected to rely on supplementary reference materials and books from earlier biochemistry courses. One of her favorite assignments is to give students the coordinates for a protein-DNA complex and have them explore 3D models and figure out how it works for themselves.
“Learning the material is important,” she said, “but really understanding what you can do with it, what its implications are, and how it applies to other material is also very useful.”
“Yes, it's hard work and you do have to just learn facts and figures,” she continued. “But there are fascinating things out there. We need to remember why we got into it sometimes: because it’s just really cool.”
Compiled by Andy Brown, Tori Lee, Louise Lerner, Sara Patterson, Emily Rosenbaum and Matt Wood.
—A version of this story is published on the University of Chicago College website