On this Mothers' Day, I reflect on the role my late mother had on my own decision to become a scientist. We all owe are mothers a great deal, and not just for the mitochondria! So hurray for mothers everywhere!

In this blog post, I show how students in my freshman "introduction to cell and molecular biology" course used "creativity"-based approaches to better understand concepts in the course---as they prepare for their upcoming final exam. I believe that this kind of approach truly helps with student ownership, outcomes, and ...

In this blog entry, I discuss how marine microbiology is fascinating to students, as well as the topic leading me (via social media) to other marine microbiologists. One of those marine microbiologists made me a "shrunken coffee cup" (shrunken due to being carried below a kilometer of depth on ...

In this blog post, I describe a simple "colony transformation" experiment I have done with my freshman students, illustrating transformation, antibiotic resistance, and GFP. The visual aspects help drive home the points effectivel.

In this blog entry, I discuss the perennial problem for educators: helping students find study strategies that help them reach their educational goals. I have found that student-generated study material is most helpful...and is sometimes quite artistic!

In my newest blog post, I discuss how taking a "beginner's mind" approach leads to creativity, real learning, and enthusiasm. I tie together Suzuki's "Beginner's Mind" concept with Elio Schaechter's "Talmudic Questions," and give an example from one of my first seminars.

Here is a short post about life in academia (with some rules) and some "rules" I have developed in teaching undergraduate students about Life in the Lab!

A piece that I wrote for Elio Schaechter's "Small Things Considered" appeared today. I tried to show what my students last semester "got" out of the course, and the challenges of a "one microbiology course" curriculum. My answer: more micro, earlier, in other classes!

Dr, Francis Su is a mathematician at Harvey Mudd College in Southern California. Last week, he was honored with the prestigious Haimo Teaching Award of the Mathematics Association of America at the Join Math Meetings in San Diego. His acceptance speech is inspiring to any educator and any ...

A former microbiology student sent me this link to a promotional spot from a football game. There is a microbiological blooper involved, suggesting that we all need to work harder to promote Microbial Literacy...even on the football field!

I comment a bit, as an educator, about the loss of Carl Woese. Not only the importance of his discoveries, but how he went about his work, remains of great value.

A quick demonstration of how my Microbial Mania can impact the holiday season!

Students learn in many different ways than simply taking tests. In my Microbiology course, I have students write a length term paper (a "Microbiography"). As part of this process, students create one page "summaries" of their microbial topic, which I call "Nanobiographies." In this blog post, you ...

In this blog entry, I discuss some recent work at the intersection of art and microbiology. I go on to show how this intersection can be useful in the classroom.

Here I try to bring microbiology into Hallowe'en with costumes in class, and some bioluminescent microbial art of famous microbiologists!

My mathematician wife "painted" onto a marine nutrient plate using a bioluminescent bacterium---as you can see, she loves Einstein. And I love microbiology. Hence the intersection!

A short post from my microbiological blog describing a bit of humorous "microbial art."

From my microbiology-associated blog, where I discuss teaching and research in microbiology at a small liberal arts institution.

We believe that college students need more microbiology, earlier in their first year biology curriculum. Thus, we interviewed first year biology students regarding some basic concepts in microbiology. We see this as a "call to arms": more microbiology, earlier in the curriculum!

For a holiday card, my wife and I made a Christmas Tree with bioluminescent ornaments. The video shows how the tree looks in natural light, and then by its own light. The bacterium is Photobacterium leiognathi, isolated by Ned Ruby and Eric Stabb in Hawai'i. This is another ...