Teaching at the University of Chicago

Teaching is an important part of your development as a scientist, no matter what career path you'll follow later in life. Here are a few of the resources available to help you through the process of teaching in the BSD:

The Committee on Teaching in the BSD Final Report (2019)

Information for those interested in careers with a teaching component

Information about the Divisional Teaching Assistant Requirement

For Faculty Mentors of teaching assistants

The Teaching Assistant Compact (students complete the first part; faculty will have a link emailed to them after the student has completed their section)

The Center for Teaching

The TA Handbook

Canvas Online resource for courses

2014

Paul Sereno and Nizar Ibrahim: helped solve the puzzle of Spinosaurus, the first dinosaur known to swim

German scientist Ernst Stromer unearthed the original bones of Spinosaurus at the turn of the 20th century but they were lost in World War II. The giant dinosaur eluded scientists until 2014, when an international team, including UChicago paleontologists Nizar Ibrahim and Paul Sereno, analyzed newly acquired fossils, remains from museum collections, and historical records to render the dinosaur’s skeleton and reveal it as the first truly semi-aquatic dinosaur.

1958

Elwood Jensen and Eugene Desombre: discovered the hormone-cancer mechanism

Building on the work of cancer researcher Charles B. Huggins, Elwood Jensen and fellow medical researcher Eugene Desombre identified the precise mechanism through which hormones drive cancer—by binding to a receptor protein in cells. The 1958 finding opened a new therapeutic front in breast cancer, leading to targeted treatments credited with saving many lives each year.

2016

Zhe-Xi Luo: discovered earliest-known arboreal and subterranean mammals

Zhe-Xi Luo, professor of organismal biology and anatomy at UChicago, was part of a team of researchers from UChicago and Beijing who discovered fossils of the earliest-known arboreal and subterranean mammals. The fossils suggest that early mammals were as ecologically diverse as modern mammals. Luo’s student David Grossnickle (Evolutionary Biology) also contributed to the research and was an author of one of the Science paper published on this discovery.

Fossils of the earliest-known arboreal and subterranean mammals

1916

Ernest Everett Just: discovered significant aspect of cell cleavage

Ernest Everett Just, PhD 1916, worked with University of Chicago zoologist Frank Lillie at what is now the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. During dissertation research for his PhD in zoology, he made an important discovery about cell cleavage, showing that the sperm entry point determines the first cleavage plane in the egg of the marine annelid Nereis limbata.

1890s

Henry Chandler Cowles: led formational work in the study of ecology

Botanist Henry Chandler Cowles’s study of ecological succession in the Indiana Dunes along the southern shore of Lake Michigan in the late 1890s opened a new field of inquiry in the natural sciences: ecology. The investigation of a changing natural landscape carries increasing importance amid growing concerns about our environment.