Our students are our greatest gifts and our proudest legacies
At a time when universities (at least in the USA) are under fire, let’s take a moment to remind ourselves how fortunate we are to be educators.
By Patricia A. Maurice and Janet G. Hering
27 May 2025, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15383857
Trailblazing computer scientist Grace Hopper worked in academia, the US Navy and industry. When she accepted the National Medal of Technology, Hopper said, “If you ask me what accomplishment I’m most proud of, the answer would be all the young people I’ve trained over the years; that’s more important than writing the first compiler” [1].
As academic women in STEMM, we have spent our careers devoted to research, teaching, and service. Generally, it seems that one’s research is the most highly valued component, especially in terms of job security, advancement, recognition and awards. While research ‘lifespan’ can vary from one field to another and some papers published before 2000 remain at the top of today’s citation lists [2], the relevance of most papers fades after a few decades. Moreover, Patricia’s MS thesis advisor once told her “you can’t be a scientist if you are afraid of making mistakes.” It’s true that even the best of researchers can publish data and interpretations that are later found to be mistaken.
So let’s not forget the importance of teaching and mentoring. Of course, teaching is not just course instruction but also training students to conduct research. It’s our students who carry our legacy on to the next generation and beyond. If we are fortunate, our students go on to impact the world through their work in industry, consulting, or academia. Even graduates who do not remain in the workforce impact the world through their voting, community service, and interactions with family, often including children. As academics, teaching and mentoring are ultimately our greatest privilege and our most lasting legacy.
Both of us have experienced the joys (and pains) of publishing textbooks. As a graduate student, Patricia was honored to coauthor the Stanford textbook on Earth Systems Science [3]. She then went on to solely author a textbook on Environmental Surface Chemistry from the Nanoscale to the Global Scale [4]. Janet coauthored (with François Morel) a widely used and highly acclaimed textbook, Principles and Applications of Aquatic Chemistry [5]. A second edition of this book, with Laura Sigg as an additional co-author, is forthcoming [6]. Anyone who is teaching knows that students are becoming less and less fans of textbooks. In the world of YouTube, Wikipedia, artificial intelligence (AI), and a gazillion online courses, textbooks seem almost anachronistic. Yet, there is really no way to replace the mental benefits of sitting all alone, reading a textbook and solving example problems.
Standing up in front of a classroom—whether 3 to 300 students—is never easy. Patricia had an advisor who, despite his endowed chair, was so stressed out about teaching that he held on to a table, which literally shook while he lectured. Another advisor was so perfect that although students each put a dollar into a pot at the beginning of the semester—the total to go to whichever student caught him in a mistake while lecturing—not a single misspoken word or mistake was ever detected. Imagine that. We both know how exhausting but rewarding classroom teaching can be. The best way to truly learn a topic is to teach it.
Remote, online teaching has grown tremendously in recent years, and it served as a lifeline for students and faculty during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, Patricia helped teach an online course at the University of Notre Dame and it went well, although it required a great deal of extra preparation and adaptation. The university’s president at the time, Fr. Jenkins, wrote in the New York Times about university plans to reopen. He stated that, “we endeavor to offer an education of the whole person — body, mind and spirit — and we believe that residential life and personal interactions with faculty members and among students are critical to such an education” [7]. He made an excellent point about how important personal interactions are for education. Professors are irreplaceable role models and both students and faculty benefit from direct interactions. That said, remote learning can be a godsend for students with certain disabilities, students who are unable or unwilling to leave their home communities (especially in remote locations), or students who are juggling career or childcare responsibilities with learning. The key factor for success is that faculty need to make an effort to engage students, even when interacting remotely. Organizations like Wild Flower [8] are helping Afghan girls to obtain an education online despite bans by the Taliban; this organization and others like it are often looking for faculty volunteers.
We each spent decades training students and postdocs in the intricacies of research. Early career experience has been shown to have a strong influence on success in academia [9], where some of our graduate students and postdocs have pursued their careers. Others have gone on to positions in consulting and industry. Some have won major (inter)national awards. Some have left STEMM altogether to become lawyers, businesspeople, or stay-at-home parents. Sadly, some died young, enormous losses to their families and to society. Each one has been a treasure.
AI holds the potential to completely transform teaching and learning, although it does not come without serious risks and potential pitfalls. Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates has been a proponent of the use of AI in education. In 2024, he posted a blog entry about a visit he made to a school in the state of New Jersey that was using the AI teaching aid Khanmigo developed by the Khan Academy (which he has helped fund). He noted that, “This technology is far from perfect at this point. Although the students I met loved using Khanmigo overall, they also mentioned that it struggled to pronounce Hispanic names and complained that its only voice option is male—which makes it clear how much thought must still be put into making the technology inclusive and engaging for all students” [10]. As we wrote about in our review [11] of Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible women: Data bias in a world designed by men [12], STEM research has a long history of neglecting to include women or gender-disaggregated data. Moreover, many STEM fields, especially computer science and engineering, are heavily dominated by male workers and academics. Thus, we need to be careful to ensure that AI-based or -facilitated teaching does not reinforce gender stereotypes and lack of inclusivity. This is something that women faculty need to keep a close eye on. We need to be educating young people, serving as role models, and ensuring that new technology is increasing rather than decreasing equity.
We both feel it is important to take a moment to celebrate all the great women and men in academia who devote time, energy, and passion to teaching. If you are an educator, kudos! You are making a difference in the world. Don’t ever get discouraged. Thank you for your dedication to teaching. It matters.
Questions for further thought
· If you are employed by a university, how much is teaching valued? If not enough, then what can you do to help support teaching?
· Do you have fond memories of specific teachers who impacted your life? What traits made them particularly effective?
· How can we help to educate the broader public, outside our universities?
References and links
[1] https://news.yale.edu/2017/02/10/grace-murray-hopper-1906-1992-legacy-innovation-and-service, accessed April 30, 2025
[2] van Noorden, R. (2025) “Science’s golden oldies: the decades-old research papers still heavily cited today”, Nature, 640: 593-594, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01126-8
[3] Maurice, P.A. (2000) The Hydrologic Cycle: Chapter IX, Earth Systems: Processes
And Issues, Cambridge University Press, p. 135-151.
[4] Maurice, P. (2009) Environmental Surface Chemistry from the Nanoscale to the Global Scale, Wiley, 464 pp.
[5] Morel, F.M.M. and Hering, J.G. (1993) Principles and Applications of Aquatic Chemistry, John Wiley & Sons, 588 pp.
[6] Morel, F.M.M., Hering, J.G., and Sigg, L. (2025) Principles and Applications of Aquatic Chemistry, 2nd edition, John Wiley & Sons.
[7] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/opinion/notre-dame-university-coronavirus.html; accessed April 30, 2025
[8] Wild Flower, https://www.wild-flower.ch/; accessed May 11, 2025
[9] Krauss, A. et al. (2023) Early-career factors largely determine the future impact of prominent researchers: evidence across eight scientific fields. Scientific Reports 13: 18794, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-46050-x
[10] https://www.gatesnotes.com/my-trip-to-the-frontier-of-ai-education; accessed April 30, 2025
[12] Criado Perez, C. (2019) Invisible Women: Data bias in a world designed for men, Abrams (US), Chatto and Windus (UK).
[13] The figure at the top of this post was AI generated in April 2025 using Stable Diffusion v1.5 on the Draw Things app and the simple description “old fashioned blackboard” with wording later added using Powerpoint.