Teaching Interests:

Prior to arriving at Emory in 1990, I have taught at large state universities and tiny liberal arts colleges. This experience gave me the opportunity to teach nearly every course in Biology. I love teaching because transmitting the joys (and trials) of the process of science to students gives them the tools for lifelong learning and discovery. Science to me is not merely a body of accumulated facts and theories, but an exhilarating process of discovery. Good teachers are constant learners, inventing, creating, and discovering new ways to facilitate learning. As my friend John Jungck says, “teachers must move from the position of sage on the stage to guide on the side.” Learning is an active process- students are not vessels into which we pour our accumulated wisdom; they are participants in generating, constructing, and linking knowledge by placing new content in the context of what they know and by developing critical analysis skills so that they can generate reasonable hypotheses, test them, analyze carefully, and draw reasonable conclusions. Good teachers and good students should “Question Authority” as the bumper sticker on my door suggests. Don't just believe! Delve into it, connect, apply, make it your own!

Courses taught at Emory: Since my full-time job is to direct and develop the Hughes programs, I haven't taught huge numbers of courses, but I hope you'll agree that they're all interesting!

Physiology with Dr. Paul Lennard: Paul and I midwifed the birth of LearnLink in this physiology course. We used simulation games and student presentations to generate active student involvement in addition to more standard lectures. Between us, we spread the fame of Planet X, where nothing works like it does on earth.

Evolution: My evolution course is constantly evolving! It covers the standard content, using simulations, problem sets, lectures, discussions, and other methods. Last year, for instance, each member of the class became for a day a Victorian, either for or against this new and dangerous idea of evolution. We read Darwin in the original, as well as numerous essays by Stephen J. Gould and others, in addition to the text. In its next evolutionary change, we will use and contribute to a WWW site I'm constructing. We may also reverse the conventional order and focus first on macroevolution and time.

Interdisciplinary Science Seminar: OK, OK, it's not a course but....every Wednesday at five in DS 308 for the past two years, fall and spring and even during the summer, I invite a scientist from some discipline to speak to undergraduates about their research and about how they became scientists. Each is asked to address their own career path and options and alternatives to straight research careers are also explored. Join us!

Scientific Attitudes: This course explored the scientific process and its strengths and limitations. By dealing with how paradigms develop, how they advance and constrain questions, how scientists are trained, and the values and attitudes underlying science, we developed a deeper appreciation of the advantages of the scientific process for problem solving and knowledge acquisition and assessment. In this course, students must develop a grant application, including animal care and use, human subjects guidelines, budgets, and “sponsored programs approval”. The course culminates in a grant review panel, where we act as reviewers for the new grants. Developing this course and teaching it has led me to renew and deepen my interest in several “research” topics: collaboration vs. competition in science and values and ethics in science.

Women and Science: This course is crosslisted in Women's Studies and Interdisciplinary studies in Culture and Society. It's a seminar course, open to all interested parties. The course has three major parts. We explore hypotheses about the influence of gender on the structure and conduct of science, examining contrasting viewpoints. More practically, we examine the evidence for and against models that suggest that the structure and process of science has precluded the full participation of women. We examine whether women “do science differently” through the biographies of women scientists and through projects. This year, this class will also participate in WWW site development so that we can begin the “digital legacy” to future classes.

Minority Issues in Biomedical Research: This course, taught on an occasional basis through IDS and AAAS, with Dr. Cliff Cockerham and others, is an intensive seminar course, designed to assess the differential health needs of ethnic groups, to examine evidence for social, genetic and cultural causes of differential morbidity and mortality in several minority populations in the US and to develop students' ability to critically assess primary literature and to write several types of scientific prose. It involves weekly short papers and one longer analytical paper.

Contributors to Modern Thought: Darwin and the Idea of Evolution: This is a new course this fall, which will be listed under IDS. The idea is that we will explore the development of the idea of evolution from Darwin to the present, focusing primarily on how this idea influenced other fields of thought. We will study influences on politics, ethics, religion, philosophy, economics, sociobiology, and literature. Interactions between these fields that advance and constrain evolutionary thought may also be explored. Should be fun!

I also teach directed studies for the graduate program in science education and teach in the Graduate Teaching Assistant course. In addition, I assist in programs in ethics for science grad students.

In addition to teaching, I serve as the Director of the Hughes Undergraduate Science Initiative.

The Hughes programs aim to enhance undergraduate science education by helping develop courses that involve active learning, make the curriculum more research oriented, and provide programs and opportunities that will attract and prepare more students for science careers. We have a special focus on attracting underrepresented populations, women, and minorities to careers in science and medicine. We have developed academic support programs for all Emory science students in conjunction with the Office of Multicultural Programs and Services. These include workshops, free tutoring, and special problem-based learning groups, among others. We offer an Interdisciplinary Science Seminar weekly for all interested students who'd like to find out about careers in science and cutting edge research. We helped to design the Advanced Biology Introductory series, Biol. 151 and 152, to give students a real taste of investigative science as freshman. We helped to design and implement upper division “project lab” courses in Molecular Biology, Neuroscience, Cell Physiology, and Developmental Biology. We offer a Summer research program for 75 students per year. Our research programs are open to students in Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Anthropology, Geosciences, Human and Natural Ecology, and Math/Computer Science. Together with Paul Lennard and Sean Murphy, I helped to develop and implement Project LearnLink . Our special project this year is to develop and fund labs and materials that link introductory science classes together. The Hughes programs continue to make a difference and enhance science education. If you'd like more information, or to get involved by making suggestions for future enhancements, e-mail me at pmarstel@biology.emory.edu. We also have a WWW site called ScienceNET which has detailed descriptions of the research programs and project labs listed above.

Research Interests

Although I am still interested in my previous research passions, evolution of behavior, physiology, and gene-environment interactions in organisms' life history patterns, my career has evolved into a primary interest in the history and philosophy of science, the evolution of ethics, and in transforming undergraduate science education. If I ever get some time off, I have several books to write and a lot of research to do in these areas. One will involve the study of collaboration and competition in research labs in genetic and evolution from the new synthesis to the present. I am also interested in evolution of human behavior and ethics. I am writing some articles on reform in undergraduate science education and this is another research interest of mine.