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Carol Hurney presenting to faculty

Carol Hurney

Q&A with Dr. Hurney, American Society for Cell Biology http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/content/full/8/2/114

JMU Center For Faculty Innovation http://www.jmu.edu/cfi/

JMU Department of Biology http://www.jmu.edu/biology/

Madison Scholar: http://www.jmu.edu/news/madisonscholar/2009CarolHurney.shtml
Dr. Carol Hurney
Associate Professor of Biology
Assistant Director, Center For Faculty Innovation

Hometown: Concord, N.H.
Education: B.A., Biology, University of Rochester
Ph.D., Biology, University of Virginia

Dr. Hurney was one of 20 professors from across the country selected in 2008 to take part in the National Science Foundation's Biology Scholars Research Residency, which helps prepare scientists to take on research efforts in the scholarship of teaching and learning. She has presented on the encouraging results of moving toward a learner-centered approach in her general biology course. In her role as assistant director of the Center for Faculty Innovation, she is responsible for helping other JMU faculty members reach their full potential in the areas of teaching, scholarship and service.

What led you to adopt a learner-centered approach in your class?

Previously, the students didn't take much ownership of it. They engaged, they worked for me, but I could tell that I was still in control of everything, and they were just doing whatever I told them to do. My learning challenge was to find a way to give them some control. There's nothing about biology I'm not interested in, to be perfectly honest. They can't pick anything that I wouldn't love to teach. That's one of the reasons why I like teaching the intro classes, because they're so broad and you get to teach so much stuff.

What results did you see?

The students feel like studying. They feel like they come to class more prepared. They pay attention more. They feel like it's designed for their learning needs their learning styles, like it actually matters, like the subject material is relevant. I was shocked. But if they walk out of my class just slightly more empowered in their ability to think scientifically, I don't really care how they got it. I want them to just realize that they're smart enough and that they can pick up articles about science and have an opinion, and even better, they can have an informed opinion.

Do you envision any application of your approach for other courses?

I think this is a great thing for a lot of general education classes that don't necessarily have a content restriction to them. In the other course that I teach, the lab class, there's not a lot of content decisions that can be made, but there are ways of giving students more power, and I am going to try that. And I am thinking about what the next step is going to be. What can I do to shift the power a little bit more, not for the sake of shifting the power, but for there to be some sort of gain.

How has your experience informed your work at the CFI?

Really woven into my job here at the center is to maintain my job as a teacher and a scholar. When we sit and meet with new faculty, we have a workshop called "How to Balance Your Three-Legged Stool." What we've learned is that really quickly, you can let things start piling up on the teaching part of you and the research part of you and the service part of you, and if you let those three worlds live in isolation, the parts are just going to stack up on each other. At some point, you can start thinking carefully about the kind of research you do, and how that can inform the kind of teaching you do, and how that can inform the kind of decisions you make about your service obligations. It gives you a focus to explore the things that are meaningful for you to explore. You can't create three different gourmet meals. Something's going to get burned.