Getting schooled

摘要

When Carol Thornber took her first faculty position last autumn, she inherited teaching responsibility for two undergraduate courses. Although Thornber, a marine ecologist, had to some extent been prepared by a unique postdoctoral training programme, making the transition from student to lecturer was far from plain sailing. Her autumn course in upper-level marine botany, at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, had her scrambling to learn East Coast species of algae and scouting field-trip sites. Her spring class, introductory biology for some 130 first-year undergraduates, had her struggling with endless administrative duties. But by the middle of the year, Thornber says, she had made a discovery that changed the way she worked.