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A World of Questions:
Sanford Simon, who has been at the fore of the Bard-Rockefeller union, is one of those minds. He received a B.A. from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the NYU Medical Center School of Medicine. Simon heads Rockefeller's Cellular Biophysics Laboratory. Simon's laboratory seeks to solve such mysteries as how cells selectively allow the internal transport of substances crucial to cellular activities and precisely how those transports occur. Even at their most deceptively basic, cells are highly sophisticated, differing from one another in size, function, and the nature and placement of their internal structures. "Most of the questions we work with have to do with how cells organize themselves," says Simon of his research. "How are messages sent within cells? Over the last 15 or 20 years, scientists have been successful in identifying a lot of the molecules involved. But what are these molecules doing? What is the timing of the steps in these processes? How are cellular components put together to create cells as differentiated as those involved in muscle contraction; impulse transmission along nerves; or the making of substances like insulin, dopamine, or serotonin?" Simon likens attempts to decipher the intricacies of cell function to trying to understand a chess game. If one watches just the white pieces, only partial information can be gleaned. Similarly limited information can be derived from watching just the black pieces. Watching how both sets of pieces interact provides additional knowledge. This simile, extrapolated to observing cell function, suggests an exponentially squared complexity—organelles within cells interrelate, and cells coordinate with other cells, in labyrinthine physiological patterns. His lab's research has huge potential impact on a number of areas in medicine. It may yield information on chemotherapeutics and drug sensitivity. Or it may provide insights into the blood-brain barrier, which protects the brain and cerebrospinal fluid from invasion by dangerous substances. A portion of Simon's research addresses a cell's internal "geography." For example, in cystic fibrosis (a fiercely intransigent genetic disease with a poor prognosis) a culprit protein functions (ironically) in an entirely normal manner. The difficulty lies in the fact that the protein is located in the "wrong" portion of the cell. This fact, says Simon, "immediately suggests all sorts of therapies" and saves precious research time that might otherwise be spent in fruitless efforts to "fix" the protein's functioning. Researchers can concentrate, instead, on rectifying the protein's location. When Simon speaks of his work, he reverts, most readily, to questions. "How do proteins fuse to a membrane? How do they cross a membrane without compromising the integrity of the membrane?" Returning to his chess analogy, Simon explains, "You're following multiple players. In trying to understand, you're eliminating one player at a time. Sometimes you're adding one player at a time. There never is a 'best' way of doing it. I always ask myself, 'Can I see the same result using a very different approach?' If I can do so, I feel much more comfortable with my results." This attitude toward research corresponds perfectly to Simon's approach to science education, and provides a road map for fusing science and liberal arts to the benefit of scientists and nonscientists alike. "If I bring in a separate perspective for students, I'm trying to get them to approach things from a different direction," says Simon. "I want them to consider that there are at least four or five assumptions in everything they've ever done. There is no absolute truth. This is where it gets beyond science. I think it's important, in all areas of education, for students to know the assumptions we make. You don't teach students, 'This is what Roman civilization was like and this is what the Greeks did.' Instead, it's, 'This is what we think the Greeks did, based on the following observations. Given these observations, and based on the following assumptions, we come to the following conclusions.' It's the same in science; every experiment has assumptions. Students have to understand their assumptions. Be aware of them. They may change over time. How you take students through that balancing of assumptions is another issue. So, when someone says there are weapons of mass destruction, students will ask, 'What are the assumptions on which this is based?'" The questioning of assumptions is, for Simon, a crucial initial step. "I may have a really nice model for a bridge and it fits with my theories," says Simon. "But if the bridge falls down it's not very useful. There's a certain point where you have to start balancing the relative merits of assumptions and realize that not all of them are equally subjective. Most students think that science is about giving the right answer, rather than asking the right question. When they learn about science, they're taught facts rather than the process of science." In constantly testing his own research by using different approaches and in urging students to seek information by embracing different directions, Simon ratifies an educational approach based on the belief that scientific information can come from unexpected sources—history, literature, and so forth. The obverse constitutes a call to the liberal arts world, to include more science in its embrace of multiple pedagogical routes. "Science is a system of thought, an intellectual discipline," says Simon. "It's something very important for everyone to go through, even if they don't plan to go into science. If students start questioning their world a little more, it will make the world more interesting to them. Another compelling reason is that modern biology will have an impact on people's lives in a way it never has before. It's in the decision on whether to give your children genetically modified food, or in responding to an insurance company that wants to test for certain potential diseases, or in developing an opinion on stem cell research. I want people to be able to critically evaluate these things. To do that, they have to be scientifically literate. They need to be empowered. Science is no longer a backwater. I think there isn't such a strict demarcation between science and health and drugs and social policy. In terms of education, I think there's a continuum there." Simon had a strong role in creating the science curriculum at Bard High School Early College and Bard's new first-year biology course. "I feel students should learn how to read a science article, how to critique assumptions, how to read lab reports, how to consider whether there are alternative interpretations of the data." He also places great emphasis on science and math education at the elementary school level and has been active in that arena since he was a New York City high school student spending summers teaching remedial math. To this day, he conducts science projects with elementary schools and has an evident fondness for the questions asked by what he prefers to call "nonprofessional scientists" or young children. He recalls, "I was walking my son to nursery school and he asked, 'Why doesn't the moon fall down?' What a great question! When you hear a question like that, don't postpone it. We have to make it very clear that asking a question is wonderful. A question without an answer is, potentially, a great question. Teachers don't have to have the answer. They should have the attitude of, 'Let's find out together.' We have to bring science into every subject. If students are learning about bridges, bring the science of bridges in. I teach a membrane biophysics course, lecture and lab, at Rockefeller. In the lab, students collect data and compare results. Then they're befuddled because the results don't correspond to the text. I've tricked them; there's a fundamental assumption built into the lab work and that assumption is flawed. When they figure it out, they're livid. They hate me. But they'll never make that mistake again. It's a very important lesson for them. You can just tell them to be careful with assumptions, but it doesn't register. They have to experience it." Experiential learning is at the center of Simon's approach. In devising lessons, he makes a point of providing a kinesthetic memory of the scientific principle being studied. Rather than providing a formula for the displacement of water, he will challenge students to design a boat—one that will float. The students experiment with different objects, note whether the objects float, and keep records of how much water each object displaces. This process enables them to deduce the relevant formula. "If the teacher said, 'OK, to make things float you've got to have your mass be above the following . . .' it would be the right answer," says Simon. "But the kids never would internalize it. If you take students through the process, that's how they learn, that's how they remember." Similarly, Simon feels that science education benefits greatly from an apprentice-mentor model in which students do actual research and are encouraged to expand their educational horizons. According to Simon, if the mentor relationship works well, the apprentices develop enough independence to define their own questions and "are constantly filling new ecological niches, sort of like Darwin with his finches. They go off to a new island where there wasn't a finch that did X, Y, or Z. If you're getting students to take courses outside of their area of study, what you're effectively doing is increasing that mutation rate. One gimmick that I use with people in my lab is that at the beginning of our weekly lab meetings, everyone is supposed to bring in one article on a subject completely unrelated to anything going on in the lab. They can bring in anything from ecology to tales of chlorophyll synthesis, just to get them thinking about things that are totally different from what we're working on. I think that as long as we allow the scientific community to be disorganized—to the extent that you can, on a local level, let these individual variations occur—you're going to continue to have people discovering new places to go. I am worried about the trend nowadays toward big science, a system in which one person or one group dictates, 'This is where we're going to go now with our science research. This is going to be the next important problem.' And they support big labs with hundreds of people. When you start doing that, as soon as you start to play God in the equation and decide where the evolution is going to go, we're mucking with the process that we know works very well, and then we run the risk of getting only students who end up being clones of their mentors and going in the directions where the money is. Just as I don't think there's a right answer in science, I think there isn't even a right question to go after, especially at this point in science." For Simon, the goal in teaching science remains the same, regardless of the age of the student. "What are the things that haven't been solved in science, yet? How do we get students to become inquisitive about the world around them? How do we empower them to pursue that inquisitiveness?" In the end, Simon returns to questions. —René Houtrides In tribute to his professional achievements and his commitment to improving science education, Sanford Simon was awarded the John and Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science at this year's President's Dinner, held during Commencement Weekend.
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In forging a mutually productive collaboration with The Rockefeller University, Bard has tapped into the resources of a leading research center, provided the College's undergraduates with a venue for exciting internships, and opened itself to insights from some of the most incisive minds in science education today.