Professional Pleasures

When college presidents get together we talk about everything imaginable; virtually any subject is fair game. One frequent item of discourse starts with the question: do you teach at your school? I haven’t done a scientific survey of the answers, but my hunch is that presidents classify about evenly into two general groups: (1) those who say, no I don’t teach because I’m too busy with other duties to do a good job teaching, and besides we have a terrific faculty who do it better than I would; and (2) those who say, yes, of course I want to do the very activity that stands at the center of our purpose. I think both answers are defensible and legitimate, but my own predilection unquestionably sorts me into category 2.

I’ve taught a course in each of my six years at Haverford. The first year was a two-semester sequence on gene therapy co-taught with Professor Jenni Punt (readers who know her will appreciate how much fun this was). The last five years I have taught Biology 359: Molecular Oncology, a senior seminar for biology and chemistry majors who meet the fairly stringent prerequisites. All biology majors must take at least two half-credit 350-level courses (a total of nine different ones are offered this year), which are intended to offer a rigorous experience at the forefront of an important specialized topic in contemporary life sciences.

My course concerns the intensely relevant subject of cancer, and stretches over both basic molecular/cellular biology and the interface with clinical diagnosis, treatments, and outcomes. Typically about half of the class is headed to graduate school, and the other half to medical school (I always lose track of the third half…), so I try to define the subject matter broadly enough to interest both groups. This year we are covering among other things: two of the most commonly mutated genes in human cancer (the tumor suppressor obscurely called p53 and the oncogene named c-myc); therapies based on inhibiting the formation of the blood supply tumors need to grow; use of bioengineered viruses to selectively kill tumor cells; and screening for aberrations that might give early identification of persons who will develop cancer later in their lives. If you are curious you can check out the syllabus at the Haverford Web site (navigate from the Home Page to Administration to President’s Office). You’ll notice that the enrollment is limited to 15 students, determined by lottery. One year the editor of The Bi-College News didn’t get selected for the course; it was a rough year in the press for the president, illustrating the complexity of dual roles.

All classes have their own unique rhythms and styles, defined both by the subject matter and by the individuality
of the students and professor. I’ll relate a couple of anecdotes to highlight some scenes from the Biology 359 classroom.

First of all, it’s not really a classroom. I teach the Molecular Oncology class in my living room at 1 College Circle. Other faculty members teach in their homes too, as it adds an ambience and affability that can be more difficult to create in a regular classroom. It helps too that I can bribe them to a good state of attentiveness by promising a refreshment break halfway through each class. We go from 7:30 to 10:00 p.m. on Tuesday nights; this works well for my schedule, and I was also once told that all college classes should be at night because that’s when the students are awake. Alas, it may not always be so for the professor.

A couple of years ago the class was discussing a recent paper whose author happened to be Stephen Lippard, Haverford Class of ’62 and chairperson of the MIT chemistry department. The paper concerned the mechanism of action of cisplatin, a common anticancer drug. After thoroughly analyzing and dissecting the paper with the proper amount of intellectual enthusiasm, the students then organized a visual representation of the molecular structure under study. This was accomplished by having several members of the class align themselves as the two strands of the DNA double helix; another group served as the interaction domain of a particular protein that bound to DNA, and the instructor (yours truly) played the role of the cisplatin crosslink between the two entities. If you can imagine this contorted collection of humans forming a writhing three-dimensional model right in my own living room, I think you’ll appreciate the creativity and enthusiasm of Haverford students. And I’m sure none of them will ever forget how cisplatin works.

In this year’s class we had a spirited discussion of the usefulness of mammography in lowering mortality from breast cancer. Although the conventional wisdom is that mammograms every one to two years are a sine qua non for women beginning at age 40, some researchers have reached an opposite conclusion, i.e., that mammograms do not reliably save lives in the population as a whole. Needless to say, this is controversial, fraught with both scientific disputes and highly personal judgments. For the record, although the issue is unsettled in the minds of some scientists and clinicians, medical policy as articulated by both the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society remains unchanged; namely, regular mammograms are still recommended. The Haverford class generally agreed with this conclusion, but the debate uncovered numerous issues about the design of clinical trials, the cost vs. benefit of medical intervention, and individual vs. societal choices in health care. These are matters of great import and I was impressed with the insight and maturity our students expressed in wrestling with them.

Will I continue to teach each year? Most certainly!