Lucy E Delaney

on my work

I have studied biology long enough to say this about Earthlings: we are all water sacks of various sizes, made of roughly the same stuff, all of us powered through the exploitation of electrical tension. Every chemical reaction within us depends on molecules interacting with molecules in predictable ways based on the fundamental laws of the universe. Seems simple enough. But then, ask any biologist: nothing is simple about making sense of living systems.

One problem is that at every level of (often overlapping) biological scale—genes, cells, tissues, organs, organ systems, organisms, populations, and so on—complex and unpredictable properties emerge as new components and systems interact. Counting every neuron in your brain and mapping the strength of their connections will tell you little of your conscious experience. Then there is another problem. Language often dictates that phenomena be placed into discrete categories: alive or not alive; conscious or not conscious; one species or two species. But there exists a continuum of possibilities between each of these phenomena that belies the utility of discrete categorization. Biology simply cannot be understood by reducing life to its parts and memorizing them. To make sense of biology, students must (1) integrate concepts from across the scientific universe—chemistry, physics, mathematics, and then some—into a cohesive and useful framework, (2) recognize new and unpredictable emergent features at every level of scale, from elementary particles to ecosystems, and (3) appreciate that while humans may covet explicit definitions, biological phenomena rarely fit neatly into any of them. So…how does the large-enrollment biology professor impart meaningful biological knowledge to students?

Let me state the obvious about my pedagogy: nothing I do fits neatly within the bounds of creative or scientific activity in any discipline. The act of teaching or learning (or living, by the way) is emotional, rife with messy contradictions and complexities that are often FELT far more easily than they are explained. My work seeks to embrace the chaos of sensemaking and create alongside it. The general theme of my current efforts centers around the use of digital media to produce high‐quality online education and community building within large‐enrollment introductory courses. You might also catch me roaming the campus on my Razor, O’Blivion.