MTS33 - Abigail Salyers - The Art of Teaching Science
Abigail Salyers is a Professor of Microbiology and the G. William Arends Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and her research focuses on the ecology of microorganisms in the human body and the comings and goings of antibiotic resistance genes, particularly genes in Bacteroides species.\xa0 Dr. Salyers is ASM\u2019s 2009 Graduate Microbiology Teaching Awardee.\xa0
If you\u2019ve ever tried teaching or mentoring, you know it\u2019s not always easy, but for an eminent scientist, teaching at the undergraduate or graduate level must be incredibly difficult.\xa0 After all, once you reach a certain level of knowledge in any field, it can be hard to relate your knowledge to people who know relatively little about it.\xa0 Dr. Salyers has tackled 100-level biology courses with as many as 300 students, taught one-on-one at the lab bench, and been an instructor at an intensive summer course in microbial diversity, all while rising to the top of her field in research.\xa0
In this interview, I talked with Dr. Salyers about the most influential teacher in her own life (you might be surprised to learn who that is), about whether antibiotic resistance is getting the kind of play it deserves, and about why the baboon vagina is an interesting study system.