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The Story Collider

Mentors: Stories about who helps us find our way

The Story Collider

Story Collider, Inc.

Arts, Science, Society & Culture, Personal Journals, Performing Arts

4.4 • 824 Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2019

⏱️ 35 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Part 1: As a brand-new professor of physiology, John Redden is eager to help students, but soon realizes it’s more complicated than he thought.

Part 2: Biologist, Sarah Fankhauser’s relationship with her adviser changes when she joins her lab as a grad student.

John Redden is an Assistant Professor in the Department  of Physiology and Neurobiology. His research focuses on understanding  the molecular basis of cardiovascular diseases. He teaches human anatomy  and physiology to pre-health majors, as well as a course in plain  language science communication.  Through his teaching, he pursues his  other passions – improving science literacy among the general public,  and building engaging, inclusive, and equitable STEM classrooms. He’s a  first generation student with a bachelor’s degree in pharmacology and  toxicology, and a Ph.D. in biomedical science. He currently serves as  an education mentor for the HHMI/National Academies Summer Institute on  Scientific Teaching, and is the lead author of Anatomy and Physiology in Context. John is originally from Buffalo, New York, the land of chicken wings,  always winter, and generally nice people. He now lives in Connecticut  with three dogs, three cats, and (thankfully), a robot vacuum cleaner. You can find him on twitter @reddenjm tweeting about science, highered, scifi, and diversity issues. 

Curious and investigative by nature, Sarah Fankhauser  has always been a lover of all things science. Sarah received her B.S.  in biology from Ga Tech and her PhD in microbiology and immunobiology from Harvard University. Sarah is one of the founders and the board  chairman of the science journal and education non-profit, Journal of  Emerging Investigators. She is also an assistant professor of biology at  Oxford College of Emory University where she shares her thrill and  passion for science with her students. Both in her professional and  personal life Sarah advocates for effective and clear communication of  science with the public. 

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

A science story, huh?

0:04.0

Is NYU scientist the...

0:06.0

I felt...

0:07.0

I felt...

0:08.0

I was so...

0:09.0

And I just thought, well...

0:10.0

It was that golden moment.

0:13.0

Because science was on my side.

0:15.0

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Story Collider, where we bring you true personal stories about science.

0:29.8

I am your host, Aaron Barker, and this week we're presenting stories about mentors.

0:35.0

If there's anything I've learned during these past eight years of my life among the

0:39.3

scientists, it's that mentorship is crucial in science. The relationship between someone

0:44.9

studying to be a scientist and their advisor can be fraught and intense. It can go so well or it can

0:50.9

go so terribly wrong. Not to spoil anything for you, but we'll hear a little bit

0:55.4

of both in our stories today. Our first story is from John Redden. It was recorded in October

1:01.1

2018 at Real Artways in Hartford, Connecticut at our show in partnership with the University

1:06.3

of Connecticut's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and their public discourse project.

1:13.8

The theme that night was intellectual humility.

1:27.3

So when I first started teaching, I didn't know anything about being a teacher. I mean, I had distilled some

1:29.2

little nuggets of wisdom here and there. Some of it sounded pretty good, dressed professionally,

1:35.5

write a good syllabus, don't put too much text on your slides, use learning objectives. Some of it

1:42.3

was kind of questionable. Don't sleep with the students.

...

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