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208 CAREER ADVICE FOR LIFE SCIENTISTS II

Teaching Is

Good for Research

Harvey F. Lodish

Whitehead Institute for

Biomedical Research

F

ew would argue with the premise that research

is an important part of teaching and that many

of our greatest teachers have also been top

researchers. Students are taught the experimental

underpinnings of key results and concepts, often

illustrating actual experimental data to establish a

point. The latest results and methods are incorpo-

rated in class lectures and problem sets; discussions

on genomics, DNA “chip” microarray technology,

and bioinformatics commonly interdigitate lectures

on cell-cell signaling pathways, protein traffic, and

the cytoskeleton. In laboratory courses students

learn how to carry out some of the newest experi-

mental techniques. In many, many ways, research

informs teaching.

But what of the converse premise—that teaching is

good for the development of one’s research program?

By requiring faculty to master new and unfamiliar

areas of biology, teaching naturally leads into new

areas of investigation and enhances one’s research pro-

gram. Also, in many medical schools and research

institutes both in the United States and abroad,

research faculty rarely teach undergraduates or even

graduate students, while at the same institutions facul-

ty in other colleges or administrative groups handle

the bulk of the graduate and certainly the undergrad-

uate instruction.

By requiring faculty to master new and

unfamiliar areas of biology, teaching

naturally leads into totally new areas

of investigation and enhances one’s

research program.