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For several years now, I have gone to the local elementary school and taken young students on a ?Walking Biology and Chemistry? course. We walk to the nearest shrubs and plants and trees and talk about how the chemistry and ecology work together to produce the biology we observe. This is always fun and generally rewards me with some precocious questions from budding scientists. It is very invigorating for me to talk to young students about chemistry and biology. More importantly, it allows me to pay tribute to one of my favorite teachers and to the College of Creative Studies (CCS).
My recollection of CCS was of a college dedicated to excellence, great collegial students and particularly of talented and inspiring faculty. I had the good fortune to have three mentors at CCS: two Professors in biology (Ian Ross and Beatrice Sweeney) and one in chemistry (Paula Yurkanis Bruice). In addition to small didactic courses, they all invited me into their labs. This was the key to my undergraduate experience and the basis for what eventually formed my career. My undergraduate research projects in biology and especially in the joint chemistry lab of Tom and Paula Bruice introduced me to the top labs in the world and to some of the finest postdoctoral and graduate researchers I have ever known. I have fond memories of being nudged in the right direction and learning bioorganic chemistry from the best. The ability to do ?hands-on? research was a remarkable experience and an incredible strength of the College.
As a freshman, I was lucky to have met Professor Beatrice Sweeney. She preferred to be called Beazy. To me she was fascinating. Her dedication to her science was overwhelming. The boundless energy for her research and teaching was contagious. As a freshman CCS student, we read some of the original works of the world?s greatest biologists and Beazy would challenge us to think like these great minds and reinvent their work. I was fascinated by the history and the art of science. I was even more intrigued by the way Beazy challenged us to look at the works with a critical and inquiring mind. I relished those small classes that challenged me to see and imagine things I had never thought of before.
Professor Sweeney was also famous for her scientific excursions to Santa Cruz Island. A weekend trip including long hours of hiking and collecting valuable biological samples, discussions about everything from genetics of rare island cherry trees to the danger of wild boar (from shipwrecked galleons of long ago) to studying the tiniest organisms that populated the streams of the island was absolutely exhaustively but the highlight of the year. These field trips were a magnificent tour de force about biology, ecology and science. What Beazy was most noted for was her famous ?Walking Biology? course taught to non-majors. She would periodically invite us along to take in the byways of Santa Barbara and to see what biology was out. Her eye was keen. She saw things that no one else saw. She uncovered ecological relationships that were amazing and one could only shake their head and hope that your mind was more prepared the next time. So, in a way, I am repaying my many lessons that I garnered at CCS by continuing this tradition of teaching young people about the biology around us. Perhaps in the future, one of these young students will remember ?Walking Biology and Chemistry? and enroll at CCS and continue the cycle.
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