Spotlight: Lessons learned

Listen to audio Download MP3 Brian Achille, Senior: Environmental Toxicology

My name is Brian Achille, I'm a fourth-year environmental toxicology major. I think that one of the biggest things that my professor Gary Cherr has taught me is that science is indefinite, and is infinite in a whole lot of different areas.

Anything I ever learn or do is always subjected to additional questions, always being formulated and asked.

I mean, George Bernard Shaw once said that science never solved anything without really creating 10 more questions in the process. So I mean to that extent Gary really taught me that I should be spending additional time outside of everything I do.

It doesn't matter if I wake up at 7 a.m. and finish work at 10 p.m. doing additional lab tests or reading more literature background on any given thing, because I could be spending just about the same amount of time outside, spending time with my family and friends, getting to know them a bit more.

And, regardless of everything and anything that I learn in science, I should be proud of what I accomplish. So, it's a matter of spending equal time outside and inside of the lab, with that you could be a better person and more well-rounded as a result. And that supersedes any success, guaranteed by academics, GRE scores or life outlook or that matter.

Listen to audio Download MP3 John Wan, Senior: Biomedical Engineering

My name is John Wan, and my major is biomedical engineering. I'm a fourth-year student, and the greatest lesson that I've learned at UC Davis is from Professor [John] Gisla, from Engineering 190 — it's a professional engineering ethics class.

And I learned that integrity is the most important thing one can have in life and in his career. I've learned that despite one's family or one's work security or monetary security, that integrity is not worth giving up, and that it's the most important thing in one's career.

And I really appreciate Dr. Gisla teaching it to us, teaching it to me, and I wish I had taken his class my first quarter here at Davis.

Listen to audio Download MP3 Jennifer Lee, Senior: Economics and East Asian Studies

My name is Jennifer Lee, 22, economics and East Asian studies, double major. And the most valuable lesson I learned is from my ARE [Agricultural and Resource Economics] 18 business law professor, Richard Kleeburg.

He told me to follow my own dreams and do what I want to do in my life, and do what I want to do in what I want to major in, and for the rest of my life, and not what my parents and my friends want me to do, because ultimately I have to live my own life and be happy with my own decisions. So that is the most valuable lesson I've taken away from UC Davis.

Listen to audio Download MP3 Priya Bhatia, Senior: Neurology, Physiology and Behavior

My name is Priya Bhatia, my major is NPB, and the most valuable lesson I probably have learned in school is that I took a business organization class, ARE [Agricultural and Resource Economics] 112, with Professor Bay Butler, and he reminded me that not only are we here in school to study and to do well, because I know a lot of people get caught up in that, but also to just remember to do good.

When you leave college, what you're not going to remember are your grades, but it's the difference that you made to the campus and to the people. So, he kind of just said, "Remember to do good."

Listen to audio Download MP3 Naomi Amaha, Senior: Sociology and Communication

My name's Naomi Amaha, and the most valuable lesson I've learned from a professor is that actions speak louder than words.

You can say things to defend yourself and just define who you are, but at the same time people aren't really going to know unless they see it in action and proof.

My experiences dealing with teachers is that I can have so many things going on in my life, and I can give all these excuses and all these reasons for why I haven't been able to make it to class or why things are going hard, but my actions through my work in my classes are really going to show how I excel as a student: Just generally that actions speak louder than words.

Listen to audio Download MP3 Anthony Pineda, Senior: Psychology, Sociology, and African/American and African Studies

My name's Anthony Pineda, I'm a triple major in psychology, sociology and African/African American studies. And the most valuable lesson, one of the most valuable lessons I think I've learned here is that teachers do genuinely care about you and they do push you to achieve, and be successful, not only academically, but just in your growth period.

It's been very rewarding. My mentors, Dr. [Chantel] Prat, Dr. [Halifu] Osumare, other faculty like Dr. [Katherine] Gibbs and Dr. [Petr] Janata who have always been supportive and just trying to push me and help me focus on what I want to do here.

That's been one of the most valuable lessons, that the system does work, and some teachers do genuinely care and want to help you outside of just pushing their own agenda and their own research.

Listen to audio Download MP3 Amir Asifuddin, Senior: Microbiology

Hi, my name's Amir Asifuddin, I'm a microbiology major, and the most valuable thing I've learned from actually all my sociology professors is that you don't realize you're a product of your society until someone actually points it out to you.

And so I was actually from Orange County in a very affluent city, and so when I moved up to Davis, I thought I moved because I was more open-minded, and I didn't hold the beliefs that a lot of the affluent people did.

And when I came here and we were learning about all these things, I realized that is was actually imbedded into me, and it was really shocking when I came to terms with it, and I was like, "Oh my God, I can't believe that," because I lived in this place, some things were part of me.

And I had to change it, because they weren't very flattering. So, I think that's the most valuable thing, it helped me grow as a person.

Listen to audio Download MP3 Nadia Abbas, Senior: Managerial Economics

Hi, my name is Nadia Abbas, and I'm a managerial economics major. And I've taken a lot of different econ classes, and I think one of the things that professors teach us in those classes that you can kind of apply to the rest of your life is how to evaluate decision-making.

And even though we're given it in the context of cost and benefit analysis, a lot of times you carry those things over into the rest of your life, just whenever you're making a decision, thinking about how much am I putting into this, and what can I yield. And I mean overall its just a concept that I kind of use on a daily basis now.

Listen to audio Download MP3 Yueyue Fan, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

I'm in the engineering school, and I teach a mathematics class, and, so, what I thought I learned the most from my students is how to convey information to a non-technical audience. Because when students start learning they may not have the background to understand all the technical jargon, and if they really want to learn, it's my responsibility to make them understand.

So, I had to change different ways of explaining things. So, through interacting with the students, I felt that I've improved a great deal, how to convey information. And, it actually helps a lot for me to make a presentation, say to the policymakers, to the state agency employees.

They want to know what I'm doing, how it's going to contribute to the practice, but they may not need to understand every single detail of the technical issues. So, I think that's the greatest thing I've learned from my students.

Listen to audio Download MP3 Ezra Amsterdam, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine, School of Medicine

Well, I think I told you when we spoke by phone, one of the most important things I've learned from a student is to listen to them to understand where they are in any particular course or any setting in which I am the mentor, lecturer, teacher, leader — to make sure I know where they are on the subject so I can empathize, be sensitive to their educational needs, and to the level at which it will be the most meaningful to communicate.

I have to avoid using a lot of jargon that we use on an every-day basis at the hospital when we're talking to first- and second-year students. The language can be befuddling to them, the vernacular that we use, so that's very, very important.

The way I learn from students, one of the most important ways I learn from students is reading their evaluations. The positive ones make you feel good, but it's the negative ones, or the constructive criticism, that are really important, because it tells you where you may not be coming across clearly; it tells you what they need differently. It makes one really — they're very, very important in terms of reshaping one's focus. This was actually very very important in the beginning of my teaching career.

When you see a pattern of commentary, it's very important to pay a lot of attention to that. An isolated point here or there might be critical; is not important as a pattern, a consistent pattern. And this happened way in the beginning of my career, and it was one of the most helpful things to me, and it taught me to listen to the students in terms of coming across in a meaningful way.

Listen to audio Download MP3 Steven Theg, Professor of plant biology

I'm Steve Theg. I'm a professor of plant biology in the college of biological sciences. And one of the things I've learned from students has to do with the questions they ask me in class when I'm teaching them.

What I mean is that sometimes it's happened where students have asked me questions that have caused me to rethink the material that I've been teaching and learn something fundamentally new about it. Students ask me a lot of questions of course, and I answer them to the extent I can, but sometimes it happens they ask me a question that's subtle and causes me to think about things in a different way. That's very helpful sometimes for learning new things about my businesses.

So, just as a way of example, I teach biochemistry, and I talk a lot about enzyme-catalyzed reactions and how enzymes lower the energy required for the reaction to run.

And once a student asked me, "Well, where does the energy come from?" And I thought it was kind of a funny question because I thought they meant where does the energy come from to run the reaction or where does the energy go, but what they meant was, "Where does the energy that's missing come from, how does that get put in there?"

And I didn't realize this until I started to answer the question, and then I realized it was a pretty subtle question and caused me to rethink enzyme-catalyzed reactions in a fundamental way. And so I came back to my office and thought about it, got out the books and read about it, and ended up with a new understanding that I now have about enzyme-catalyzed reactions.

It wasn't that I had things wrong to begin with; I just process them now in a fundamentally new way. So what I really mean is that what students can teach me if I'm paying attention to their questions is that the questions sometimes ask you to rethink the material that you're trying to answer about, and you get new fundamental, subtle differences in the way you think about things. And that's been very useful, happened a number of times.

Listen to audio Download MP3 Rance LeFebvre, Professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, School of Veterinary Medicine

My name is Rance LeFebvre, I'm a professor in the pathology, microbiology and immunology department in the School of Veterinary Medicine, and the question for me is what is the most valuable lesson I've ever learned from a student.

I've taught many, many classes here at all levels, all grades, but there was one student in particular who taught me, "If you really want to do something, you can do it." I had this young man in my medical microbiology class about 10 years ago, and he was about 22, 23 years old at the time, and he had cystic fibrosis. And technically, you're really not supposed to live that long.

This young man had been in the hospital so many times for infections, and yet he wouldn't give up. He got an A in my class, applied to medical school, graduated from medical school, and as far as I know, he's practicing medicine somewhere with this still, horrendous, life-limiting disease. So if there's a lesson there, it's that no matter what obstacles you face, if you really want to accomplish something, chances are there's a way, if you have the will. And I will never forget that young man.

Listen to audio Download MP3 Joaquin Galvan, Retention Coordinator at Learning Skills Center

My name is Joaquin Galvan; I work at the Learning Skills Center; I'm retention coordinator. I've been working with students for over 20 years, and I've learned that everybody has a story.

Because of their age and social environment, students have many similarities, but I've learned that everyone is unique and one of a kind. This understanding helps me view the world around me in a more holistic manner. Everybody has a story.

Listen to audio Download MP3 Catherine Kudlick, Professor of History

I'm Professor Catherine Kudlick. I teach in the history department. I've been here for 18 years, and I teach European history, disability history, French history, women's history, history of medicine, all sorts of different things.

And I thought the question was very intriguing about what I've learned from students because I learn from them all the time. And the big thing I learn from students is from returning students, the older ones that are coming back to school. And part of it is that sometimes I think if I was Queen of the Universe, I would have everyone take at least two years off between high school and undergrad and come when they're really ready and they really care, so that college is not just 13th grade, 14th grade, but that it's really a learning process for them.

Older students have been out in the world, they've been thinking, they've been engaging in lots of different ways and have all sorts of experiences that they bring back to the classroom. I've had people that have been truck drivers; I've had people that have been stay-at-home moms, and they're so excited about coming back to school, because they want to learn. They're there, they want to read the books, they come to your office and they want to talk about them and they want to know more, they sometimes ask for additional reading. They're very engaged with learning.

Let me think what else I can say about returning students…

I know when I was first starting out as a professor, it was fascinating because I was very intimidated by them because a lot of them were older than me. I was a very young, beginning professor, and somebody would come in who had this whole life set of experiences, and I was just so nervous that I automatically assumed that they would know more than I did just because of who they were.

And then it turned out that they were just as scared of me, because they were coming back to school, and they were totally terrified, and they thought, "Maybe I'm not good enough, maybe I'm not cut out for this." So, it was a very interesting ballet that we did, kind of dancing around, figuring out who knew what and who was teaching who what, and it came to be this wonderful equilibrium in a lot of cases.

And in a few cases, I've had colleagues and known of people who were returning students and came back and then actually went on and got full degrees, got Ph.D.'s, and have since gone on the job market and trying to get jobs, and some cases have succeeded and others — some are still working on it. And it's just great as a teacher, because I learn from them, their excitement, their engagement, their "stick-to-it-iveness," their perspective, all those things, I really learn so much.

Listen to audio Download MP3 Sham Goyal, Research Scientist in Plant Sciences

My name is Sham Goyal, and I'm now located in the Department of Plant Sciences, formerly Department of Agronomy and Range Science. I teach a graduate class called Principles and Practices of HPLC [High-Performance Liquid Chromatography]. And I've taught this class for the last 18 years, and over the last 18 years it has become very, very popular, to the point where there have been years where we had to teach three sections of the same class in the same quarter, although generally the graduate classes don't get this big.

But this is a kind of a class that's very applicable to many, many students and sciences. And so, we get students in this class from almost all different colleges and with all different backgrounds, including undergraduates. I do allow undergraduates, at least the seniors. So, basically, what happens is I'm dealing with a very diverse group of students.

And over the years I've learned many things from students — No. 1, that they're younger people and they're more in touch with the time and technology. So I've always learned a lot of things along those lines.

But if you were to ask me what is the single most valuable thing that I learn from my students, I would have to say that I learned to be patient. That's the single most valuable thing that I've learned from students because in my class, like I said, I get students of many different backgrounds, and I soon found out that I cannot be impatient with the students.

I would have to be patient because the backgrounds are different, their science backgrounds are different, their learning potentials are different, their existing knowledge is different, so [I] had to be patient, and over the years, it's almost now become a habit.

I don't get irritated at all if I get asked the same question 20 times or 30 times by different students, because I've really learned to be patient, and I think the students are the ones that I have to give credit to for teaching me to be patient.