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The RIOS (for a Racially-just Inclusive Open STEM Education) Institute presents an interview podcast where Dr. Bryan Dewsbury of the Science Education And Society (SEAS) lab converses with individuals who do social justice work in science education and education in general. We hope people enjoy the conversation itself, and consider new ways in which education can be transformative whatever your situation may be.
Welcome to Knowledge Unbound. Trucking along? Trucking along, dude? Did you say we're doing well?
Segev Amasay:We are doing well.
Bryan Dewsbury:We're doing well. Well, you know, one of the interesting things is we, for obvious, fairly obvious reasons, we record a lot of these in the fall or even the summer before. Because, you know, it depends on people's schedules and, you know, we don't wanna be producing this stuff in last minute. So I don't necessarily always think about who's gonna come after who. Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:So this week, it's interesting how today's guest is was my mentor when I was an undergraduate. And last week was Aria who I taught. So, you know, last week's conversation was about me trying to sort of investigate ways in which I try to be the best I could be for her. And this week, I got to reflect on me as a student, it was it was pretty awesome. I I don't have yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:I mean, I I think this is one of those episodes I don't wanna introduce too much because we cover a lot of ground, and I hope there are lessons in mentorship here that you can take and that you enjoy. Doctor Lawrence Blumer, a full professor at Morehouse College. We spent an hour talking. Hope you enjoyed. See you at the end.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay. I know I say this about a lot of my episodes, but this this one is is really truly special in its own way. I I can't stress this enough. I have the chance to interview my undergraduate adviser, doctor Lawrence Blumer of Morehouse College. There's a lot to talk about, Larry, which I I feel it still took me a while to to be to be okay to say that.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right?
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Like, I
Bryan Dewsbury:know some people will go years and years until their deathbed and say doctor blah blah blah. Yeah. You you gave me your grace and said
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:No. I did.
Bryan Dewsbury:Brian, you can call me Larry. Okay. So just so my audience knows that I'm not being rude.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:No. Absolutely not.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay. Larry, welcome to Knowledge Unbound.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Thank you so much, Brian. This is a real honor. It
Bryan Dewsbury:is. It's it's the pleasure's all mine. Why don't we start with your your jit? Like, how did you how did you get to Morehouse? And and I know, okay, we're all professors now.
Bryan Dewsbury:We get a resaw job. We applied for it. But, you know, tell me about your journey from Michigan to Atlanta. Okay.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I I think it's still accurate. I considered myself an academic gypsy
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Because I finished at Michigan, defended my PhD, but then stayed on. I stayed on for two years and was teaching there and doing research at the same time. But at the same time, was looking for postdocs and actively applying. I ended up taking a postdoc at Ohio State. How
Bryan Dewsbury:dare you?
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Yes, indeed. I got a lot of that. But to be fair, I never attended a football game at Michigan. How dare you, right And I never attended a football game at Ohio State either. But the move to Ohio State was a good one.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:And I was at Ohio State for three years doing research with Jerry Downhauer, modeled sculpins and other things, behavioral ecology. And from there, the postdoc was going to end. I started looking for jobs everywhere, and I ended up doing a sabbatical lever placement at Kenyon College, which is just north of Columbus, Ohio. A very nice, exclusive private liberal arts college. And again, it was a good move for me because I'd never taught at a liberal arts college like that.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I didn't really know what that
Bryan Dewsbury:Where was undergrad for you?
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Michigan.
Bryan Dewsbury:Oh, so okay. You just stayed through. Okay.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I I just stayed through. Well, not exactly. I went to Santa Cruz for a year.
Bryan Dewsbury:You had to party for at least one year.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I went to Alaska
Bryan Dewsbury:that summer. Okay. Fair. Fair on Spain.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Wasn't exactly staying. But yeah, I was at Kenyon for another three years. I would just get one sabbatical replacement after another. I don't know if I was proving this to myself, but I was teaching courses that I'd never taught before and realized, I can do this. I can't just be an ecologist.
Bryan Dewsbury:I can do
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:other things. And I knew that before from the teaching I'd done at Michigan. And from Kenyon, again, I knew it was gonna end and I applied for everything under the sun. I mean everything. I don't know if you know this, trained to be a high school biology teacher.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Teacher. I did not know that? No. I did.
Bryan Dewsbury:And I This was after Kenyon or before?
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:No. No. No. I when I was at Michigan as an undergraduate, when I graduated, I had a teacher's certificate for secondary education.
Bryan Dewsbury:Wow. And So you know my wife is a Michigan alum and her major was education. Oh, no. I didn't know
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:this. Oh my goodness.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She she she was a little bit after you. Let's just
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:say that. Yeah. You know, I mean, if there's anything that characterizes me, I never do anything straightforward. I didn't major in education at Michigan either. I earned a bachelor of general studies so that no one could tell me what to do.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I think you understand that maybe better than your audience
Bryan Dewsbury:is But gonna
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I'm a very stubborn person, which has served me well in some circumstances and terribly in others. But at the same time that I was studying biology the way I wanted to study biology, I went to Great Britain and basically did all my coursework except my practice teaching, which I had to do back in The States. So I did my teacher training in Britain, in Sheffield, which again, not a straight line. In any case, I was applying for everything from high school biology positions to community college positions to college and university positions. And I wouldn't say I was being discriminate about it, but I'm sure I was.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I wasn't just applying for anything. I mean, it had to be in my field. And Morehouse had a position for someone who could teach environmental studies or environmental biology at that time.
Bryan Dewsbury:But,
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:so not ecology? No, there was no ecology course at Morehouse
Bryan Dewsbury:at There that
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:was an environmental biology course taught by Judy Bender, who'd been here a long time. She had moved laterally to Clark Atlanta, where she could focus more research. So they were looking for someone to teach those courses, but it was a tenure track position. And I came to Morehouse, and I was just wowed by it. I understood almost immediately that Morehouse students go on and do really incredible things.
Bryan Dewsbury:Was Morehouse on your radar at all before that? I mean, I know you say you're applying for a lot of different kind of jobs, but even before, say, you were applying, did the school, its reputation, any sense of the HBCU culture? Was that on your radar at all?
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:It really wasn't. Mhmm. Mhmm. No. To be fair, it really wasn't.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Now I knew enough history Right. To understand what HBCUs meant and to understand Morehouse's place in history because of Martin Luther King Jr. And others, to be sure. But it wasn't really on my radar. It's not like I focused on this.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I remember when, after I'd gotten the position, some of my colleagues telling me stories about the kind of antics that other applicants brought with them to try to make them fit. And I didn't bring any of that. And I don't think I would have anyway, but even if I had a stronger sense of what Morehouse was about. But I took to it immediately. Mean, it's more than fair to say Morehouse has been extremely good to me.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:But I really felt I could make a home at Morehouse.
Bryan Dewsbury:And
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:it wasn't just that I enjoyed the teaching I enjoyed doing the research. It was deeper than that. I knew that the students I was working with were really going to go on and do some incredible things. And that's a really intoxicating thing. To know that you're making a difference Mhmm.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Is is important.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. You know, it's it's interesting because and I've told this story publicly many times that I I for maybe similarly to you, I I knew of Morehouse. I was coming from a different country, as you know.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:And when people look at me as somebody of African descent, a lot of times they make the assumption, sometimes unstated, right, that I chose Morehouse because of the incredible black community that was here. And that couldn't be further from the truth. Right?
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Sure.
Bryan Dewsbury:I mean and when I got here, don't get me wrong, I did have an incredible community, and I had a great time here, and I'm forever indebted to it. Right. But I came here because they gave me a full ride. Yeah. Period.
Bryan Dewsbury:Larry, that's that's I mean, I came from a working class family, International exchange rates, that's the only way I could attend college. Right? So so it's interesting then to have you you you you understand you're coming into something special, but it's only when you're there.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Yeah. It's only after
Bryan Dewsbury:get there. To really sit with you. And I think for me, it honestly took me a full year and a half before it started to really sink in what I was a part of.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Well, to be fair, I mean, there were some things I had a sense of. Mhmm. I mean, one of the things I was really clear to to me was that there are so few black ecologists out there. They're just Minority representation in ecology and in environmental science is basically nil. And I remember thinking when I came down for my interview that the best thing I could do as a faculty member here was train students who would replace me.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:And I don't know that I've done that, but I've trained a lot.
Bryan Dewsbury:You've trained quite a few ecologists. Replace as a tall owner.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Replace is a different thing. But that was clearly on my radar. I understood that. I think it's an embarrassment to the field that there's so few minority students that are in this field.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right. I mean, I would only really come face to face with that when I was in grad school and I started to go to large conferences. Right? Because the only conferences I had gone to as an undergrad were either, like, minority serving conferences or maybe undergraduate research conferences on campuses. But when I started to go to ESA and looked around, I like, oh, wow.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Right. I mean You know?
Bryan Dewsbury:There might be one or two. That's it. Pick us out from a crowd of 6,000, and it it was startling.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Yes. Yes. That's absolutely true. One
Bryan Dewsbury:question I wanna ask you is about teaching. Okay. I I wanna say this with all the love in the world because I I I had I was a bio major here. I I I I think I was pretty well trained. Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:But I will say even the individuals involved, I think, are good men, good people. I say men because they were mostly men. But it was only really when I met you. And and, unfortunately, I met you later because ecology and environmental biology were classes that were electives or these upper divisions, so to speak. So I didn't get to you probably till my junior year.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? And, of course, back then, which was 2002 or whatever, right, I don't even think the word active learning was a thing. I don't think people I mean, maybe it was, and I just wasn't reading papers at that time, but but, certainly, I think it wasn't as buzzy as it became later on. Right? Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:So so I had taken several science classes, which were very much sit, be quiet, look forward, listen for fifteen minutes three times a week, and hope to memorize as much as you can in preparation for all of three times you will get to be assessed on this thing. Right? Right. Just high stakes, high, you know, high anxiety type of things. Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:And and so you get we get to ecology, we get to environmental study, and all of a sudden, I do you know I still remember the case study on the Klamath Basin where the the the Oh my goodness. The trade offs with the indigenous tribes and the farmers and right. I I remember that to this day because we sat and we actually did it. Right?
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:And, of course, at 18 or nineteen twenty, however old I was at the time, I didn't have a word to describe why those classes appealed to me more, why it sat with me more than the other classes, which were, again, good people,
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:but Right.
Bryan Dewsbury:It it it was always it it wasn't about the learning. Right? So I guess what I'm curious about and, again, this is pre 200 papers on active learning. I'm curious as to what your inspiration was to approach teaching your classrooms in that way.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:So this takes me back. I've actually I've thought about this a little bit in anticipation of your question. And not that you've given me that question But in even coming out of high school, I resented the way I was being taught. I remember actively resenting the way I was being taught. I I was rebelling against having to memorize things.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Mhmm. And I I mean, I went completely off the spectrum in terms of rebelling. Mhmm. And as an undergraduate, simply picking and choosing what I wanted to do, I was always attracted to laboratory courses because many of them allowed you to actually do things. You actually learned a technique.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:You actually manipulated the material. Even then, I was picking and choosing. I remember two weeks into a laboratory course we weren't doing anything interesting. That was it. I dropped it.
Bryan Dewsbury:Two weeks to prove to me this is worth my time. It
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:really was. And I hadn't formulated any of this clearly in my own head, but I understood then that you learn best by doing things. And I was very much attracted to those kinds of courses. So as a graduate student, again at Michigan, I remember volunteering to teach as a teaching assistant in the laboratory courses that no one else wanted to be in.
Bryan Dewsbury:Such as?
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Genetics and invertebrate biology. In invertebrate biology was the course that really, in many ways, opened my eyes because you've got 23, 24 different phyla and we're doing everything. Students are doing dissections and experiments and the material is there right in front of you. We had seawater tanks running. This is at Michigan, in Ann Arbor.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:And I just found it really attractive. And then some of the mentors I had at Michigan were I mean, we were still doing cookbook labs. Don't get me wrong. We weren't doing active learning in the sense that we understand it now, but there was a sense that we could have students do some work where they were actually manipulating the materials and that there would be the possibility of changing some of the, some of the settings or some of the circumstances and learning something new. And I think that carried on.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I mean, in my own head, it carried along in the rest of my career so that when I finally got to Morehouse, I knew that laboratories needed to be something more than me just giving orders. Because although I don't think I'd articulated it very well yet, I understood that if you just give orders, you're just gonna get yes sirs. And that's not the way to train future scientists. It's not the way to train anyone for the future. So I think as early as 1996, which was when I Actually a little earlier than that, my first NSF proposal that was funded was a laboratory improvement proposal.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:And I was writing laboratory protocols to have students do some actual experiments in the context of a new ecology course that I was teaching.
Bryan Dewsbury:And this is pre CUREs, right? Pre course B is
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:an American. The terminology didn't exist yet. At that time, so simultaneously with doing that, I became active in the Association for Biology Laboratory Education. And even then, people presenting at Able weren't presenting cures and they weren't even talking about guided inquiry. But I think people at those conferences understood what active learning meant.
Bryan Dewsbury:Almost by definition.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Yeah, by definition. This is a conference for your listeners who I don't
Bryan Dewsbury:will put a link on the site.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Good. It's a conference that's entirely workshop based. It's a conference where the participants are the students and you're doing a laboratory study from start to finish over a three hour period. It's an incredible experience. But over time, those Able Conferences really began to focus much more on not just active learning, but replacing cookbook laboratories with guided inquiry type laboratories.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I mean, it just morphed over time. And that became what's now being called cures. And I simply changed with it. And maybe I was leading that to some extent.
Bryan Dewsbury:But that that's something I mean, I and I love a lot of people who are kind of proponents of cures written on the cure literature. I've read almost all of it. And I say this without any, you know, with without any really caveats here. Right? But I'm like, I was counting beans and bean beetles long before
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Before they were talking.
Bryan Dewsbury:Before they were using these fancy names. Right? I was there at Hope Hall 320, like, seeing which beans were chosen and why and helping doctor Blumer and Alex, I think, that your postdoc at the time? Asian guy?
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Oh, yes. Yes. Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. Yeah. Yes. You know, kinda come through lab protocols that would last the the the entirety of a semester. So, yeah, I mean, it's just been cool to see that whole mindset evolve.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Yeah. And it was a it was a change in mindset. Even then, when, you know, when you went through, we weren't talking about cures. No. No.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:We weren't using the terminology. And and in fact, when the terminology first came out, I remember we didn't wanna use that terminology. We wanted to call them CREAS, Course Based Research Experience.
Bryan Dewsbury:Wasn't that written up somewhere
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I'm like sure it was.
Bryan Dewsbury:But
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:the CURE academic was the one that stuck. But it's absolutely true. Even in those early days, we understood that students really got a lot more out of helping design the experiment and actually doing the work and not knowing what the answer was going to be. That's what makes it authentic. Maybe more than cure per se, it's about authenticity.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right. Yeah. I mean, I would almost prefer that word. And and and I could even tell you, like, you know, I left I graduated more in 2003. I was a grad student for a very long time because I did a master's and a PhD.
Bryan Dewsbury:I only taught during the PhD part of it. Right? And I think I've told you this before that it it was actually teaching, like, actually getting into a lab and being a TA is what changed my entire professional trajectory. Right? Just fell in love, and I think this is the thing I'm gonna get up and do every day and be inspired.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. And I got really fortunate because at around the time when I kind of fell in love and decided to shift my focus, FIU, where I did my PhD work, got a pretty big NIH grant to do some curriculum redesign. Right? So you have to remember, this is around 2008, 2009. Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:So all of these cure active learning, it still wasn't vogue yet. No. It wasn't. And not only was it not vogue, frankly, a lot of research faculty didn't really wanna have anything to do with a teaching related grant. Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:Right. And then some of that attitude filter to their grad students. So along comes idiot Brian who's like, oh, you like it. You go be the head TA. Do whatever you want.
Bryan Dewsbury:So I I got, like, a a clean slate to do whatever I wanted with those labs.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Right? Oh
Bryan Dewsbury:my I was very responsible with it, at least I tried to
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:be. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:But I can tell you one of the inspirations that I had, your partner in crime, Chris Beck, who's professor at Emory University. I remember talking to him I I can't remember where or when, but offhandedly, he talked to me about how he taught his ecology lab. That he basically let them come up with a question. He guides them and can you know? And then together, they kinda work through how you design.
Bryan Dewsbury:I said, that's so cool. That that you're actually doing ecology.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:So, fortunately, I had a little bit of a budget. And so the first lab that I taught, which was the ecology lab, that's what I did. And, I mean, it's it's I mean, all the labs after that was great experiences. Right? But I think the novelty of doing that and watching them, you know, put things together, you know, and and just coming up with interesting questions.
Bryan Dewsbury:Like, one student one group built a hydroponic system and compared it to a a greenhouse, you know, seems you know, they try to control as much as they could. Yeah. Really, really interesting things. You know? And and I think the the joy and the unknown, but like you said, the authenticity of that experience is what sort of solidified, yeah, this is the space.
Bryan Dewsbury:This is what education is.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:So what's really opened my eyes, and and I know you're aware of this Mhmm. But I've been involved in a number of different cure models. Aside from the bean beetle work that I'm really known for, I've been involved in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's phage hunters
Bryan Dewsbury:work
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:since 2009, no, 2010.
Bryan Dewsbury:And
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I fell into that accidentally. I was brought into it by a colleague. I wouldn't say I was kicking and screaming, but didn't do it voluntarily. But it opened my eyes. It really opened my eyes to what authenticity can mean.
Bryan Dewsbury:And
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:again, for your listeners who aren't familiar with HHMI's program, it's pure discovery. It's pure discovery. The students aren't asking the question, they're not developing the protocol. It's very light on hypothesis testing, but it's so powerful.
Bryan Dewsbury:And they do this this summer before they come in, if I remember correctly.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Well, depends on the institution.
Bryan Dewsbury:But you did it that way, right?
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:No, we did it at Morehouse in the academic year. Morehouse did this as an experiment. Our experiment was we were only going to invite incoming freshmen to take the course if they were coming to Morehouse so poorly prepared based on their SAT or ACT scores that we wouldn't allow them to take the first biology course. And so they would have had to sit out for a semester. They'd had to take either remedial math course or remedial English course.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:So rather than just sit out, we were inviting them to come into the phage hunters program. And not all the students accepted. We we had this long list. We would send emails out. The students who accepted did phage hunters with us.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Then the second semester, they would be in the first biology course. The students who didn't accept, they would be sitting out of biology, but then they would come into that Right. First
Bryan Dewsbury:we had a natural comparison.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:The phage hunter students do so incredibly much better in that next biology course. I mean, there's a carryover effect, and it's independent of content. They're they're not doing virology and and, you know, viral genomics in the first introductory biology course. In fact, our students would understand something about translation that is specific to bacteriophages that they never get taught in those courses. So I'm convinced it's self efficacy.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:We change the way they think about what they're
Bryan Dewsbury:capable of. Because they're doing a lot of doing. They're doing. They extract it from They're the soil at
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:extracting from soil. Yeah, they're isolating viruses from soil and carrying right through to characterizing the virus that
Bryan Dewsbury:they've isolated.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:And each student doesn't know exactly what they're going to get. They know they're going to get a virus, or at least they think they know they're going to get a virus, but they don't know what it's going to be. To use the word transformative sounds like hype, but it really is. I saw in that first semester when we only had nine students what it could mean for students, and I thought, this is it. That And understanding translated into all my other work too.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right. I wonder, just to stay on the Fiji Hunters for a second, I wonder and I'm sure you may know this because I know you have colleagues all around the country who have this who are part of this program, have this grant. But the way you set it up, right, they've come into this phage hunters class relatively naive to the the the technical aspect of it, and maybe at least on paper, right, unprepared for it. Right? And I'd be interested in what the impacts of that kind of class would be, say, like, if it was done fourth semester, summer kind of thing.
Bryan Dewsbury:You know, after they took a bunch of so so so and maybe this is the point you're making. Right? Is it yes. There is a content piece of it, but is it just going through a process where you can see that, amen, I can do something really technical and do it well. And that that is the thing that you take into your other two bio classes versus, like, I know a little bit about virus structure.
Bryan Dewsbury:You know? Like
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Yeah. No. I don't think it's knowing a little bit about virus structure. But but to be clear, the implementation of the phage hunters Uh-huh. Curriculum is different at each institution.
Bryan Dewsbury:Institution. Yeah, that's what I imagine.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:There's a lot of variation. But David Hanauer, who's done the research on this for HHMI, has shown very clearly that it has a dramatic positive effect on all students. It's just in our case, we tried to push the envelope. We pushed it to its limits. We asked, can we get positive outcomes with students who we predict are going to fail?
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:The answer is yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:What's what's the question I wanna ask? Because you the the the the predict they're gonna fail piece. Right? You know, when I became a faculty member in 2014 And I think the nature of these things is some of it is just how you're wired. Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:For me, you know, I was raised in a very kinda optimistic believe in people's better angels type of house. Right. So I carry that trait in my personal and professional life. So for better or for worse, I I think I see all these students, you're a human being. You have all of the biological matter present needed to do anything well.
Bryan Dewsbury:And my job is to figure out how to get you to see that and how to show you the academic and professional and personal behaviors, social behaviors that are needed to get you on that path. That that doesn't mean I'll give you an a. Right? That that means that wherever you you whatever your state of readiness is when you show up to my door, I'll hopefully take you a lot further down that path when you leave. Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:But but to do that, I have to have that belief in the beginning. Right? So when when when I arrived to my first job and and, you know, failure rates in Intro Bio was forty, fifty percent. Right? There was this thing in the air where it almost was as you well, students failed it.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? I'm not I'm not trying to say students don't have responsibility. They are 100% do. Right? But I also see them for where they are developmentally.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? And the the the sort of if you could change the conditions around around them, if you change the and and by conditions, I mean psychological, social, infrastructural, right, you might get an a different outcome. Right? So so I think this is essentially what you've done with phage hunters, but you had to have started with a belief that that's possible.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:No. You're absolutely right. I and I have that belief. So I'm gonna tell you a little story. Yeah.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Please. Morehouse is not unique in this. Mhmm. Mhmm. Historically, and it was true when you were a student here Mhmm.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:That pass rates in the first introductory course were fifty percent.
Bryan Dewsbury:Larry, at at Crongh Forum. Right? You know? You also have that? Okay.
Bryan Dewsbury:Oh, yes. We got to look to your left, look to the right speech as an entire freshman class. Let me let righteous.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Explain that explain that to your listeners. It's a it's an awful tradition.
Bryan Dewsbury:It's well, and and I think it's also not unique to Morehouse. Maybe not. So so it's essentially the dean of students or whoever he was would say, you know, one person next to you will not be here next year, the clear implication being that that person would have failed out. But the unclear explanation is that it's because of them, Right? So it's basically telling you, you know, figure it out.
Bryan Dewsbury:And if you can't, it's on you. Right. Which is a pretty deficit minded way to look at this whole experience.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I agree entirely. There was a point early in my career at Morehouse where I took over the lecturing in biology, the first biology course, biology 01/2011. And I remember when the faculty member who regularly would teach it came back, he was very adamant in wanting to know what was my pass rate because he'd heard that I was doing things very differently. He And was very concerned, and he was relieved to know that I still was getting 50% pass rate. This was early on in the career.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Was never
Bryan Dewsbury:But
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:convinced that that was inevitable. And it's not inevitable. It's absolutely not inevitable. And that's not to say that you're gonna save every soul. But the problem we have is that good teaching does not necessarily result in good learning.
Bryan Dewsbury:It takes two, it takes two.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:And maybe we don't fully understand what good teaching means if you don't get good outcomes. My own experience has been that we can get dramatically better student outcomes if we pay attention to what matters. And part of that for me is that we should be doing a lot less lecturing
Bryan Dewsbury:Mhmm.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Because it's not an effective way of learning. And we should be doing a lot more experimentation
Bryan Dewsbury:Mhmm.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Experimental design, writing and speaking Mhmm. And and doing.
Bryan Dewsbury:Being human, maybe? Yes. What is that like? What so I think you and I similar in a sense. I I know this happened during grad school.
Bryan Dewsbury:It happened during my first seven years as a faculty member. I I think now where I am now, my department is very bought in to a I dare say, progressive way of approaching the class. Right? But there certainly was a time when some of these things you're talking about, would have had to convince colleagues.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Oh, no question.
Bryan Dewsbury:And if anything, people would have seen you as irresponsible even, right, or radical.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Well, the response you get would be, well, we have to expose our students to these things. Right. And my tongue in cheek response would people die from exposure.
Bryan Dewsbury:That is very tongue in cheek. But what was the journey like? Because I think I think now I mean, you know, part of it is time. Part of it is there's more and more evidence out there. What has the journey been like, you know, getting that mentality to penetrate?
Bryan Dewsbury:Not just in the department, but maybe around STEM at Morehouse.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:So in the department, my department's bought into it.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:They they fully bought into
Bryan Dewsbury:it. Mhmm.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:And that's gratifying.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I don't think we've converted every laboratory course to the extent that I think we could. Mhmm. But we're on our way. Mhmm. It's we're going in the direction I would like us to go.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:There was a while when I was doing workshops here at Morehouse on guided inquiry.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. Yeah. You used to bring people to campus. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:So it's not as if people don't know what I'm up to and and don't know what the outcomes can be.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:But we've not seen the other STEM departments embrace this, biology has. But I've not given up.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right. Let me ask you this because this is something I've been working on with a colleague who's a sociologist. I was doing a lot of reading about John Locke, Francis Bacon, right, second treaties on government. Now I ask people. I say, oh, you probably did this in high school assuming I was told that most Americans did this at some point in high school.
Bryan Dewsbury:I was quite surprised, or maybe I shouldn't have been to find out the answer is no. Right? But as you know, there there's this trail from Francis Bacon who inspired John Locke, who uses this kind of scientific design to to think about how democracies and society should be formed, and and then Thomas Jefferson, who's inspired by John Locke, you know, hides this sort of kind of scientific method language in the Declaration of Independence. We submit these truths to candid work. Like, all of so and and and the the 1920 scientific democrats led by John Dewey.
Bryan Dewsbury:So I kinda have this very highbrow, high minded way of seeing the value of teaching the way you just described, not just because it's it's how we do science, but also it's it it has some relevance to how we live our lives in a society where we're supposed to be listening, where we're supposed to be able to critique, accept critique, be in you know, have difficult dialogues and not be emotional about it. Right? There's there's some transference here.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Right? No. Absolutely. It's about being open minded.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right. At at at the base of it is being that. Have you been able to kind of lean into any of that to con I mean, not that you have to convince a lot of people at this point, but but I'm I'm wondering even especially now in the times we're in, how much we need that mentality of open mindedness, of respectful inquiry, of working through differences, of asking good questions, of being curious.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:It's a really good question, Brian. I haven't put it in those terms. What we have done and again, you're familiar with this. The most recent project that Chris Beck and I have done with Nicole Girardeau and other colleagues was to ask about the importance of student autonomy, to ask the research question.
Bryan Dewsbury:And
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:this was a five year study, a six year study that we did. And we found that both student attitudes and student outcomes aren't much changed when you compare lower autonomy classes to higher autonomy classes. Now to be sure, all of these classes are cures.
Bryan Dewsbury:The
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:only difference is whether the students decide what the research question is or whether the faculty member brought the research question to them. Now, once they have the research question, the faculty members in both situations still taking them through a design process.
Bryan Dewsbury:They have
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:to develop hypotheses. So it's a cure in both cases. But it doesn't seem to be necessary for students to have that highest level of autonomy that would be the gold standard for, say, PhD research.
Bryan Dewsbury:Though
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:to be sure, some PhD students never
Bryan Dewsbury:get there.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:But that's another issue. We won't go
Bryan Dewsbury:Next episode.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Maybe not with
Bryan Dewsbury:me since I
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:don't train PhD students. But the reason I mention that is that I think in some ways it was a disappointment because we fully expected high
Bryan Dewsbury:time to result.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:But in some ways it's a relief because faculty who are hesitant to implement course based undergraduate research type pedagogy might be more inclined to do it if they don't lose even that level of control. In other words, if a faculty member can come into a class and say, class, this is the question we're going to address this semester, using these tools, that maybe that's an easier activation energy to overcome. At least in my own head, I'm thinking maybe we could decrease the reluctance of faculty to embrace this kind of learning and teaching modality if they know they still have some control because it doesn't seem to matter that much.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. That's that's a really interesting finding. May wanna ask you more about that offline. Tell me about doing this kind of work, and by by this kind of work, I mean, you know, ecology, environmental biology, this type of work. In a bio department, and this is not unique to Morehouse, this is everywhere, including where I teach, where usually upwards of 90% of the students are laser focused on medical school.
Bryan Dewsbury:And then sometimes the institution biases their curriculum and the infrastructure they build around the students to to to privilege privilege that. Right? Which makes some sense, but it it you know, not everybody, and I was your student, and I was one of them Yes. Had that in mind. What was it like to to bring that kind of mentality into a premed focused place?
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Well, it's always a challenge Right. Because students are skeptical of you trying to teach biology when they just want to learn pre medicine. As if that was something separate. I'm constantly and still to this day correcting students, no, there is no pre medical
Bryan Dewsbury:major. But
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I think my approach has always been to appeal to their selfishness, which may be an odd thing to say. But my training is in evolutionary biology, so I don't think of selfishness as necessarily a negative. It can be a positive. All of these students who want to go to medical school, they know they need to get good letters of recommendation. I tell them right up front, I said, The best letters of recommendation you will ever get will be from someone who you do research with.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:They will know what you're capable of doing. They will know how motivated you are. They will know what capacity is.
Bryan Dewsbury:They will
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:be able to write you a letter that's so unique and so positive that it will accomplish what you want, but you have to do the research to get
Bryan Dewsbury:it. So
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:there's that part. The other part try to appeal to, and I guess this is you know, I'm taking the positive road here. Right? I tell them all the skills they're gonna learn in a research lab are transferable. The the communication skills, the the the the ability to manipulate materials, the all of that's transferable.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Mhmm. And medical schools know that. Yeah. The people on the admissions committees know how authentic research experiences really matter and they demonstrate someone's discipline and their dedication. I mean, all of these, there are all these soft skills that go along with it.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:But again, you have to show that you have those. If all you've done is taken courses and gotten good grades, well, everybody applied medical school has got that.
Bryan Dewsbury:What's going to set you apart?
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Oftentimes what I'm telling students is, What kind of narrative do you want to tell? What kind of narrative do you want to have? And for some of them that works. For others, no. They're just laser focused.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I've got to get the highest GPA I could possibly get. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to talk students down from retaking courses, which is silly.
Bryan Dewsbury:Like, you got an A minus, dude. Relax.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:But even if it wasn't an A minus, if a student got a C in a course, I'm telling him, Don't waste your time retaking this course. Everyone expects you to get a better grade the second time you take it. Take a course you've never taken before and show us what you really can do now. That's the narrative you want to tell. I play this game with a lot of students.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I'll say, imagine you're in an interview right now and they're looking at your transcript and they say, well, I see you got a C in this course. Can you tell us about that? And I say, okay, so there are two possible stories you can tell. One is, well, I retook the course and you can see I
Bryan Dewsbury:got an
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:A the second time. And then the other is, well, yeah, I was having some trouble that semester. But as you can see, I took a more advanced course two semesters later and got an A. Which story do you want to tell? I mean, it always convinces them.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Now, does that really make that big a difference to them? I don't know. But to me it's the same story about getting students who really want to get engaged in research. A lot of these research programs go begging for students, particularly students of color and our students just have to look.
Bryan Dewsbury:What has it been like mentoring non pre med students?
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:It's such a pleasure.
Bryan Dewsbury:I know I know it's it's at this point, there's probably hundreds. Alright?
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Yeah. It it is. It's it's always fun because there's so many doors that can open for them. And it's one of the other stories I'm telling students that they should pursue what they're passionate about. That if they're passionate about it, they'll do it really well.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:And if they do it really well, people will notice. And if people notice, doors will open. It always works that way. It's hard to convince students of that. You know, it's fun because every student's different and every student comes with a different portfolio.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:There was a recent student I was talking to. He is telling me, well, he really doesn't wanna go to medical school. I said, well, what would you like to do? And he said, well, I'm not so sure, but, you know, I'd really like to do something that improves public health, that addresses disparities and access. I said, oh, my eyes opened wide.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I said, there's some incredible things you can do, and you don't even have to major in science. Right. Right. I mean, I I often will tell students, you know, if you really wanna make a difference, you don't wanna be a physician. You know?
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Who are the people who are running the hospitals? Who are the people who are telling the physicians gets done and what doesn't get done?
Bryan Dewsbury:Who are
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:the people who are deciding what gets covered and what doesn't get covered? They're not physicians.
Bryan Dewsbury:The infrastructure around the physicians.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:It's this whole medical industrial complex, but someone has to run those things. Why shouldn't our students run those things? And they can't. And so it's a lot of fun advising those students.
Bryan Dewsbury:The interesting thing with mentoring and I think it took me several years to understand this and maybe it took me becoming a mentor myself at a faculty level. I mean, did mentor as a grad student, but I think just having some years under your belt. I think before that point, I maybe saw mentoring in the very after school special way in that, like, there's these clear things you tell a person and then they change their behavior and then they go off into the sunset and become great kind of thing. Right? And what you find out is sometimes, many times, maybe even most times, some of the best mentoring you do, you don't even realize you're mentoring.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. Right? You don't you don't script it. Right? You just you you show up, you be a good person, you believe in the students, and, you know, you there's a a a inner belief that something will stick.
Bryan Dewsbury:And let me just give you an example. I'm not sure if I ever shared this with you. So there were several pieces of great advice you had given me while I was here at Morehouse. One of them was to if I was interested in environmental stuff, which is basically what I call it at the time. Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:Try to do different internships in the summer to see what really kinda catches your eye. Right? So the first summer, did the sales in Mollie research at at well, with you, but through Emory.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Right.
Bryan Dewsbury:Second summer, I did I worked with a consulting company up in Norcross, Georgia. Like, Chris Beck hooked me up with that. This is summer I was out at Smithsonian in Edgewater, Maryland doing crab research. Right? But by the time you and I, I think, really kinda met met, it was it was after my sophomore year or, like, near the end of it or something.
Bryan Dewsbury:And I don't know if you noticed. I almost flunked out of malls. I so I so I came in. I was doing okay. Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:I think I was probably at, like, a three, four, maybe three three by the end of the freshman year then took another hit, you know, and so by the time I went into my second semester of my sophomore year, I think I was about a three two something old. I don't remember the exact number. Right? But guess what I did? I don't know who told me this was a good idea, but I was in calculus two, physics two, organic chem two, genetics, and philosophy.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Oh, goodness. Yes. That's a heavy load.
Bryan Dewsbury:So the good news is I got a e in philosophy. And the others, not well. And and so it was a kinda thing. And so the the the requirement to keep your GPA, sorry, to keep your scholarship was three point o, which is not particularly high. It's a b average.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? But but by the time November came, you know, you're doing the calculations. Remember, you just have, like, three exams in these classes.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Right.
Bryan Dewsbury:So you're looking at these finals and it's do or die. Right? And I'm already kinda calculating how am I gonna tell my parents, you know, because if I don't get a scholarship, I'm gone. Like, I'm a f one student visa. I'm back home.
Bryan Dewsbury:This is this is it kind of thing. So the the short version of it is, thank god for the curve, which I don't believe in, but it happened and it saved my life, that I ended up with a 3.01 cumulative.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:And You'll excuse me for laughing.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? No. No. Or you could laugh. No.
Bryan Dewsbury:This this is, like, know, twenty six years ago or so. And, you know, I did a lot of soul searching that summer. You know, I went on done the internship, and and then I I came back to Morehouse, and I was working in your lab. But I was doing a terrible job, and you actually fired me. Like, you didn't, like, say you're fired, but you you kind of graciously say, maybe you should be thinking about something else, or maybe we can focus on building the environmental club, which we did.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? And what I tell audiences audiences to this day, and I tell this story a lot that this is my third year at Morehouse, and you were the first person to ask me, why is it you wanna do environmental conservation? Everybody else, every other professor, the only questions they were interested in, why not getting A's in my class? Why not studying hard? Like, it was always very and, you know, many of those personalities at the time were very kind of hierarchical.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? Like, you know, you see they're stiffed and scared out of your mind and, you know, and you're the first person to ask me my why. Like, why was this important to you? And through a series of conversations and, again, even in that time, I couldn't sit there and tell you 22 year old Brian, like, understood the psychology of what was happening, but now I could look back and that's when you you look and say, wait. There's so much I can do, and here is why I care about this.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? And so when Franklin and I joined the Nature Conservancy. That's when we formed we joined the environmental alliance initiative thing. It was like a nine college. We formed a club.
Bryan Dewsbury:We did a a a environmental audit of campus.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Oh, this was through the Associated College of
Bryan Dewsbury:South Correct. Correct. Yes. All of that happened in my junior year, and and that's when I started to look into internships, like, outside of Atlanta, Georgia and really thinking about grad school. And I don't think I I think I can confidently say that when you were asking me those questions, you probably weren't thinking I'm gonna change your life.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:No. Absolutely not.
Bryan Dewsbury:But I I do think that that semester back and the reorientation I had towards towards what it meant to learn and and and what I was going after, it it carried so much more significance that I can't see my journey today would have been possible had that not happened. So so, a, I wanna say thank you. Wow. I wanna say a heartfelt thank you.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:You're
Bryan Dewsbury:welcome. And I just I don't know if you can have I mean, you've taught thousands and thousands of students. Right? But it it was quite a unique time, and I I wonder if you kinda remember that process when I was in your lab and we started the club.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:So, you know, I remember and I showed you the photograph
Bryan Dewsbury:earlier. Yeah.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Yeah. Yeah. I remember when we were post we had a little group of students and everyone was doing projects and we would go to the Georgia Power Environmental Laboratory and report to them. And they were helping. They were providing us some financial support, which was wonderful.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:The kinds of questions I was asking you just came from me. I guess it's my own bias. Grades are important, but grades aren't the
Bryan Dewsbury:end all.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:But you're right, I wasn't thinking consciously, Gee, I'm going to change Brian. Not at all. Yeah. I was probably thinking, you know, what do you wanna get out of this?
Bryan Dewsbury:Right. Well and and here's the other reason why that question is important. I think you know this because you met my parents on graduation day, that I'm a first generation college student. I mean, kind of like, my dad did a couple courses, you know, letter certificate, but that was it. My mom did night school when I was young.
Bryan Dewsbury:You know? And my sister was in college in The Caribbean. But in terms of navigating Morehouse College, one of the things I tell audiences when I tell that story is I did finally tell my parents about I almost flunked. And they didn't say to me, you know, are you using metacognitive practices? Which I didn't write.
Bryan Dewsbury:They didn't ask that stuff. They're just like, well, you know, if it doesn't work, call you, you could come home. You know, we love you. And, you know, and they were very sweet about it.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Right? And supportive.
Bryan Dewsbury:So when you ask a student like that a question, like, what do you wanna get out of this? When you're first generation, that's not a question you've thought of. Right? Like, just just getting to Morehouse Yes. And and seeing graduation as a as a possibility is a victory in and of itself.
Bryan Dewsbury:Like, forget, like you know? Now so so when you do that, right, and this is, again, hopefully, part of the mentoring lesson I would love people to take from this is you you are furthering people's north star. Right? You are a student who may for whom getting to that campus is a victory. You're giving a new mark of what victory could be that you may not have thought of until you ask that question.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:That's right. No. You're right about that. And and now I can't get it out of my mind. But it's not what I was thinking about.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:The mentoring part's really interesting because I've never done any training this at all.
Bryan Dewsbury:Larry, nobody in The United States Of America has done mentoring training before they became a faculty member, unfortunately.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Maybe it is unfortunate. So I think it comes from a place of trying to be honest and thoughtful and mindful and constructive. And I don't know what the outcomes are going to be, but I know that if I can't do those things, I shouldn't be a faculty member.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. Yeah. I feel like when I I mean, the other thing that's kind of, you know, could have probably played a role in this is that during the time I knew you and not just Dream Morehouse but beyond, right, like, I remember when you were talking to me about letting your daughter drive your car. Right? Like, right now and all the things you're gonna put in place.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? I mean, I know she's you know, you marry your grandparent now. Yeah. You know? So so I know, like, that that thick of your career
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:She still drives way too fast for the record.
Bryan Dewsbury:For the record. Okay. But the but I know you you are you're in the thick of parenting. Right? A a a high schooler.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? I'm I'm parenting a middle and a elementary school boys, and and I can't help but see the cross pollination
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Sure.
Bryan Dewsbury:In how I think about my mentoring them and mentoring students. So I'm not gonna tell I'm not gonna tell the audience anything about your age or any time. I'm not gonna say any of that stuff. Right? But I know I could confidently say that you're at a point where you're you're looking at the sunset and thinking about what your next step is.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? If let's say you left tomorrow, which you're not, but let's say you left tomorrow and you had to write a couple sentences and leave in your desk that told the next person who took your office how to be successful on this campus right now. And just for context, ladies and gentlemen, I am actually recording on the campus of Morehorse College. It's a real privilege to be here. I'm in a building that was not here when I was here.
Bryan Dewsbury:Ray Charles Recording Center.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Well, Ray Charles what do we call it? Performing
Bryan Dewsbury:Performing Arts Center. Yeah.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Yeah. Ray
Bryan Dewsbury:PAC. Ray PAC.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Ray PAC.
Bryan Dewsbury:So it's a pleasure to be here, and it's a lot of memories. To see you in the first Whitehall where I lived. Back to the question. If you had to leave a couple sentences for that person, what what would it say?
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:This is a really interesting question. You know, it should be an easy question.
Bryan Dewsbury:Well, maybe not though. Well
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:You know, I'm not gonna answer it directly. We're interviewing candidates for a position in the department right now. Sometimes they ask the same question, how do you support new faculty? What do I have to look forward to if I were to come to your institution? To me, it's part of the same question.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I think the most important thing is and the advice I would give anyone who came to the college is keep an open mind. Don't be easily discouraged. Remember who you're here for, but don't forget to take care of yourself too. You don't want to die at your desk, but you can really become deeply embedded in this institution, to the point where people refer to you as brother, which is a strange thing, but it's real and it's
Bryan Dewsbury:sincere. You
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:wanna be decent with people and not worry too much about getting credit.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right. Right.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:You know, if you do those things, you're gonna succeed here. Mhmm. And you'll do more than succeed. You'll you'll change lives.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right. Right. I think.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Not that I think about that.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:But, you know, working at Morehouse is a is a real privilege. It's been a real privilege.
Bryan Dewsbury:Mhmm. But
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I didn't come here to transform education or to make a big impact on the African American community. Far from it. I came here to make my career. It just happens that I'm here and I get these collateral benefits, I think, and I view them that way. Some colleagues, not close colleagues who know me, but colleagues who don't really know me very well, talk about that it's a wonderful thing that I'm teaching at Morehouse College.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I think, What are you talking about? They pay me. They actually pay me.
Bryan Dewsbury:It's actually the job.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Yeah. It's actually a job. It's not volunteer work. But people leave good jobs that pay well. It's more than that.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Mean, Morehouse is a real community and it's a privilege to be part of that community. But it's also a responsibility too. And I haven't hesitated to to engage in that. Yeah. I I I enjoy it.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Yeah. I guess if I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't be here.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right. What would it be? Thirty years?
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:I've been here thirty five years.
Bryan Dewsbury:Thirty five years. Wow. Wow. That's impressive, man. Well, hey.
Bryan Dewsbury:I really appreciate you willing to spend the time with me. I I hope you know deep in your heart even if you don't see the examples every day that the people you've mentored are trying to pay that forward and and spreading that goodwill to the students that we have the privilege to to to mentor and and teach. Thank you, Brian.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you. This has been very enjoyable.
Bryan Dewsbury:More for me, I think. Knowledge Unbound is brought to you by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. We are a product of the Rios Institute for Racially Just Inclusive Open STEM Education. Thank you so much to my undergraduate mentor, Doctor. Blumer for spending some time being willing to go to memory lane and explore some themes.
Bryan Dewsbury:Just really hoping that our conversation provided some richness for you. Sigheve, what did it provide for you?
Segev Amasay:This episode hit a bit close to home when he was talking about how he was spending his time just sitting in class, trying to memorize several things before a quiz or an exam or what have you And it just reminded me of my early years here at FIU, which if some didn't know, I took Chem one, Physics one, my very early years And I was exposed to all the ordeals that Bio, Chem, Pre Med students had to deal with. There was always a bunch of memorization. I'm like
Bryan Dewsbury:Wow. This is the point.
Segev Amasay:Yeah, it's tough out there. Granted, I following their footsteps because computer engineering and bio took a completely different thing. But it really just puts into perspective just how stressful it can be sometimes and how people
Bryan Dewsbury:just focus. Not just stressful, but maybe pointless. Right? Because well, that's too. Especially for you as an engineer.
Bryan Dewsbury:I mean, you by definition, you're being trained to do things. Right. To solve problems.
Segev Amasay:Right. And the thing that I'm starting to realize is, like, it's more like, that entire thing is it's more focused on, like, memorization instead of learning and applying what you've learned. Yeah. Not putting it into practice, which, you know, for me as an engineer, as you mentioned, is just is just not important.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. So And I mean and I know this is you know, I've I've had a pleasure of knowing him, you know, after my undergraduate when I fell in love with teaching. And and so I know through our conversations over the years how much that is his mindset. But but I also feel and I guess I hope that the way in which him and I talked about that and talked about the human side of what it meant to invest in a student versus just telling them information. I hope it gave people a different way to look at what teaching and what mentoring could be.
Bryan Dewsbury:So that's that's the note I wanna leave people on. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to our producer, mister Segev Amasai. Have a great week. Have a great week mentoring.
Bryan Dewsbury:Have a great week being a student. And have a great week being excellent each other.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:The the problem we have is that good teaching does not necessarily result in good learning.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right. And It takes two. It takes
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:It it takes two, and maybe we don't fully understand what good teaching means if you don't get good outcomes. Mhmm. Mhmm. My own experience has been that we can get dramatically better student outcomes if we pay attention to what matters. Mhmm.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:And and part of that for me is that we should be doing a lot less lecturing
Bryan Dewsbury:Mhmm.
Dr. Lawrence Blumer:Because it's not an effective way of learning. And we should be doing a lot more experimentation Mhmm. Experimental design, writing and speaking Mhmm. And doing.
Bryan Dewsbury:Being human maybe.