Dr. Kathleen Nolta is a Senior Lecturer here at the University of Michigan. She received her B.A. from Michigan in CMB and Chemistry and her Ph.D from University of Chicago in Biochemistry. Dr. Nolta currently teaches Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry courses.Q: What classes are you lecturing this semester?
N: Chem 210 & 211. The typical double load, every winter for the last 15 years.
Q: What do you think of research in general?
N: Research will always be essential, always be needed, and always be fun. All those things are going to be happening no matter what. That’s a guarantee. I think…[which] fields…get the money will evolve. Pharmacological research will be big for the next century. As soon as that door was opened, drug design will make everybody’s life better forever. So, what happens [is that] pure science will take a blow. People studying things that may have applications down the line but are…considered more traditional, [are] not going to get the funding. Whereas they could if they will be important down the line they would help pharmacological research but [if] there’s no direct applications they’ll suffer.
Q: Also, you did some research at some point along your career
N: Too much
Q:Could you tell us a little bit about that experience and did you enjoy it?
N: I loved it. I loved research when I was in it. I’m approached biochemists and I did a lot of protein purification, I did a lot of electronic microscopy, which is getting to be almost a dead field now because there are new techniques that allow you to see things at a molecular level where electron microscopy would pick up for its time seeing inside a cell was a great thing but now you got other techniques that can see well beyond that. I loved it and [have] nothing but good things to say about it. Fell out of it when I had children and basically I took a lark job teaching while I was recovering after having my second child and I thought, hey this is kind of fun too. So I love[d] research when I was in it, but don’t miss it. If I did, I would probably go back to it.
Q: Are you ever planning on going back to research?
N: I don’t know, I’m only ever going to be in teaching only if it is still fun. But I said [that]…many years ago and I’m still in it. In some ways, in teaching, especially if you’re teaching something like biochemistry, you’re really never out of [touch with] research, you always [have] to face new discoveries so you can incorporate them into how you teach, especially in the field of biochemistry where it changes daily. New ideas, new drugs, new proteins [are] discovered. All those things…[change] daily, so you’re always tied to research no matter what. When you’re teaching something introductory like organic chemistry, you don’t really have to be on the forefront of the peer review articles. What’s the point of teaching something when it’s no longer taken to be true?
Q: We see that most researchers also teach. Do you think having research is necessary to make a good teacher?
N: Depends on the field, if you are introducing an elementary course like the fundamental[s] of organic chemistry then research is not necessary. In some places I think that research faculty have a distinct disadvantage because they are so far removed from that introductory level that they often have a hard time connecting back to it. Who remembers what [are] Lewis structures anymore? In that way I don’t think it requires research and can be a disadvantage, but if you’re in one of the upper level courses, your best source is from the people who work in the field. As long as they can communicate, then you’re okay. That is a challenge no matter what. Remember that none of us in this field were trained as teachers. I never took a class on how to teach. You’re part of an institution that values research and therefore teaching is a plus and is something that’s part of your job because you’re supposed to be preparing the next generation, but they never train you for it. It’s given that you’re supposed to be able to communicate.
Q: Say one of your students wants to be a professor at a university, what would be your suggestion for them to become one?
N: Okay, so a teacher at a university…you’re kind of stuck. Even as bad as the economy is, to get hired as a teacher at a university (meaning a credited university) usually requires a PhD, which means you have to work in your field and you have to publish in your field and you have to earn the doctoral degree. The good thing is that you’ll get the teaching that you want to do built into that, but a lot of people who want to teach may not be so excited about the research aspects and so they have to go through that and maybe they’ll fall in love with it even, but they have to go through it to get to the other side. If you wanted to teach at a junior college, you could probably get away with a Master’s Degree.
Q: Do you think that you imagined yourself as a lecturer when you were at a university?
N: Never. Never. Never. I was in research and I was going to always be faculty. I never ever thought about teaching until I fell into it and I thought as long as it’s fun, I’ll stay with it. I think it’s the only way you can ever enjoy going into any job.
Q: What do you think of the quality of teaching here at the University of Michigan?
N: Here’s what you should know about me -- I am a product of the University of Michigan. When it came to teach, there was only one place I ever really considered making this as a career. I fell into it in Chicago and when I moved to Michigan, I could’ve gone back to research and I would have been perfectly happy doing research. An opportunity to teach at this place, and no other, is what kept me in teaching, so I feel like I got the best undergraduate education that I could have ever hoped to get at this place. I had teachers that I still remember to this day: I still remember Don Cameron who taught Great Books and I still remember the excellent teachers. So, if I didn’t think that this place wasn’t worth teaching in, I wouldn’t have taught here. I love this place. I think it can be the best kind of university. It offers something for everybody and I think the best you can do, and the best I wanted to do, was making it a really good place to go and learn. That’s how I approach every class I teach.
Q: In your classes, we see that many of your students come from different backgrounds. Some of these students may not have taken chemistry in high school. How do you level out that playing field when you teach?
N: I assume that nobody has taken any chemistry that comes into my class. I teach it from the start and that’s probably why I start slower than most. For people who do have some background probably think it’s old, but the ones who haven’t had it in a while or maybe never had it the way I look at it get the paving way. I build it so everyone starts at the same thing. I don’t know what you learned before and I don’t even know if what you learned before is right, because a lot of times that’s the challenge that we face. Some people come in with a strong background, but sometimes that’s not really good background. They think that they just had AP Chem and they learned very bizarre rules that don’t apply in anything that they’re going to go on with, so I just go with the assumption that nobody knows anything. I teach it very much like you’re learning the alphabet for a new language, from start to finish.
Q: What is your advice for a successful transition between high school and college?
N: More than any test scores, and even more than any natural aptitude, the best way to prepare for college is to manage your time. I’ve seen students with very low test scores do exceptionally well once they get to college because they are simply good at figuring out what needs to be done, and when they need to do it. The first year of college was a relief for me because there weren’t many classes per term; they don’t meet every day, and you don’t have 7 AM to 4 PM every single day mapped out. Frankly, all that extra free time is great – if you can fill it as if you were in class, like high school. So for me, I thought, “Thank God, I’m done with high school; I could take what I wanted to take, and I could design a way to make sure I had my time filled so I [don’t need to] pull all-nighters.” It’s just about time management. You want to be good in college? Start training yourself: sit down and do your homework, know exactly how to plan your time, and don’t count on your parents to do that. That’s why some people have it built in, right? They’ve been doing it since they were in elementary school, that’s why they were naturally ready for college since they were five!
Q: Do you think that the grades students receive in class are good indicators of their future?
N: Depends on the class. Sadly, the [organic chemistry] classes I teach get the reputation of being the weeder classes. Obviously, there’s some spreading across the students in classes like this. When half of the students get B or better, that means the other half doesn’t. You have to hope that for each class, you are seeing who’s the top of that class in that term. That doesn’t mean that any one class can determine the value or skill of the student, but the overall academic record should show that. On the other hand, everybody knows that certain fields have high grades, and that’s OK. You see more about a student in what they choose to take rather than what they get in a particular set of classes.
Q: What made you become interested in chemistry?
N: I started as an English major. Being in the mode of getting my distribution done, I entered college like I would’ve finished high school. So I took physics, chem., anthropology, some social science [class], and great books. I kept taking English, and I kept taking chem., because I thought they were fun – I saw them as puzzles. And what fell out of them was a degree in chem., only because it was thought to be more practical to get a job. That’s really why I did chem. I just continued because I liked it; it wasn’t that I went [into college] knowing that I was going to be a chem. major, I just earned it accidentally.
Q: Would you say that college has become less flexible and more competitive at the same time?
N: Yeah, U of M has. [The competition has certainly increased] because health fields are growing, and U of M is one of the main feeders into all of the health professional programs. If you can prove that you can handle U of M as an undergrad, then you have a better chance of getting into medical school, or dental school, or public health school, or whatever graduate program you’re looking at. The result is that you’ve got extremely competitive students who will get into U of M – and that’s getting harder to do because of the competition there –so that they can get through the next step. As competitive as you are in high school, you’re not going to be at the same rung at U of M, and that means you won’t be in the same rung in applications for grad school. So [U of M] does get the reputation of being a weed-out process, but that’s only because the students who are interested [in the university] are naturally weeding themselves out. It’s becoming very competitive now because everybody thinks that you need to have certain set of credentials. And sadly, it’s becoming more and more true.
Q: What’s the most rewarding aspect about being a lecturer?
A: I learn something every term. I learn something actually every lecture, but I feel like every day is an exploration for me. I think of different ways to expose students to things, I think of how they’re thinking about things [based on a question I get], I think about how to podcast – which I never thought I would use the word, much less do. The most fun for me has always been learning. Teaching, for me, is learning.
Q: Do you still keep up with articles in journals?
N: For biochemistry, I do. For organic [chemistry], I do only in that I can pirate it for test questions. The pure sciences are going to get short shrift in this next generation. I mean, how many Diels-Alders [reactions] can you run before it just becomes another Diels-Alders?
Q: What do you think are the inefficiencies of research nowadays?
N: The journals are published in a matter of weeks. It used to be the biggest inefficiency- [in past] a new discovery would go through peer review and would take three months before you that saw thing come out. Even hot topics like science in nature- there is huge gap between when you have the information and when you can actually report it. That fortunately has changed because now you got a much faster journal- everything is electronic. Still I would say it is overwhelming in its breadth and I think it is efficiency. “Journal of the American Chemical Society”- a huge tome- nobody reads it, nobody could possibly read it. But with search engines- it is now read more than it ever was. That will only get better because people will pick out the things that they want and they can get a tag and they can told when hot topics of their interest get released. Another big efficiency is probably getting money- that’s a problem. It is a vicious circle. So much grant money is dependent on publishing and yet to publish, you need to have the funds. That’s probably the biggest thing and the room for most growth. Thankfully the electronics have not been so slow to come.
Q: In chemistry or biochemistry, do you think that there are biases in research?
N: They are built into the society. How many female faculties are here? I am giving a good guess- 8 may be out of 75. And let’s just flatly say- 60% are Caucasian males. That is not something that is going to change soon. That’s just in it.
Q: How do you think that affects the research? Does it have any negative influence?
N: Think about how much it will impact everything when you have [middle aged white males] as being the primary population as faculty with the ones that are called to research round tables meaning if they are giving grants what they do is they call together the leading researchers in the field and they are going to score the research grant proposals for the junior faculty who are searching for grant money. The bulk of the people scoring it are white males of middle age who have very stick in the mud- ‘this is the way I do it, this is the way everybody should do it’. Don’t you think that will skew every population that comes? It will, of course it will. It will change, unfortunately it is going to take a lot of path blazers to be the worst hit because they are the ones trying to get in the door. Females are going in now higher. I have more female students than male students and I have noticed that in chemistry, biochemistry, there is definitely significantly higher proportion of females to males. What happens to them if they are in upper level classes? I don’t know, it would be interesting to see. Already it has changed for math- it used to be significantly more men in math. Now there is kind of an even split.
Q: A lot of the research is team based. How do you think team based research affects research as a whole? What do you think of the competition between teams?
N: I think collaboration is the key to advancing scientific knowledge. There is no doubt about that. But unfortunately built into that is the risk that you have that your competitor will take away the work you are collaborating in. It is a whole new word now. With the electronic system you have now, you should not worry about the competition. Everybody is racing to publish very quickly and you don’t have worry about the danger zones of mud between finding and reporting. Collaboration is the key because with how broad these fields have become, with how huge the field of biochemistry has become, any one researcher cannot possibly understand all the application his particular discovery will have to the rest of their field. So to maximize the usefulness of research, you need collaboration. You need somebody else to make you support your discovery. I hope that collaboration would be the beginning of next generation. But I don’t think competition will be gone completely and the more research money dries up, more people will go in with the mindset of competition. The ideal thing would be you bring in your competitors as collaborators- then you don’t have to worry about that either.
Q: What do you think are the special qualities of a successful researcher?
N: Time management.
Q: Just time management?
N: Yes, that’s the key to everything scientific. Study or research- it is time management. And also with a researcher, I live with a researcher- so I know this, if you want to be happy and still be in research, then you have to learn to balance your life. Most people who are successful as researchers and successful in their life have a balance so that actually they can have a family. That’s my thought on that. But do you mean success as a Nobel Prize winner? If you are Nobel Prize winner, then you have to have no life [laughing]. That’s okay- for some people, that’s all they want.