This week, we are featuring Dr. Stephen Thomas who wears many hats here at MSU. He is the Digital Curriculum Coordinator in the College of Natural Science, the Assistant Dean for STEM Education, Teaching and Learning, and he is also the Associate Director for the Center for Integrative Studies in General Science. Stephen was recognized via iteach.msu.edu's Thank and Educator Initiative! We encourage MSU community members to nominate high-impact Spartan educators (via our Thank an Educator initiative) regularly!
I’m Dave Goodrich and I help design engaging learning experiences with educators like Stephen here at MSU. I’ve had the privilege of getting to work and learn from Stephen over the years and was glad to get to be able to interview him for this series. This is a longer conversation than typical educator stories, but we could have talked even longer, I’m sure. In fact, from this conversation, I’d love to have follow-up conversations with Stephen on some of the things that came up here, but for now, read more about Stephen's perspectives and experiences below:
--
Dave
I thought we could begin our conversation by having you give a glimpse into how you became an educator and your path to becoming an educator. We also usually start this with a challenging question: In one word, what does being an educator mean to you?
Stephen
I would say I am really focused on connection. So usually I'm dealing with populations who are studying things that are unfamiliar to them. So usually I'm teaching non-majors or done some work and informal science education, and, you know, some work with majors. But I feel like in general, I'm usually talking to a naive or inexperienced population, and I'm trying to help them to see themselves in the content that they're studying. And then I think over time, I've realized that there's a large piece of having a connection with the individual in order to help them then make a connection with the content. And so you know, and sometimes it's even like, how are you connecting them to each other, in order to help support them, like peers and their fellow students? I think there's a lot of that element in how I go about probably in the educational endeavor. So it's a lot of like, how do we engage people and get them to see themselves in the content that they're working with?
Dave
Yeah, absolutely. So I love talking to educators, like you, who inspire me. It's educators like you who helped me decide to go into education, because of how they kind of poured themselves into it and really cared for their students like how you're describing. I'm curious, I don't know if I've ever, ever asked you before, was there a moment in your life where you were like, yes, this is what I want to do. How did you enter the world of education?
Stephen
So I come from a long line of educators and lawyers. I was never going to choose law. I find it fascinating, but it just wasn't for me. And it just seemed like a very natural fit. So I think what's interesting, though, is that the piece that I've really resonated with is not necessarily the teacher part, it's actually the curriculum part. To go to the law piece, you have trial lawyers, and then you have the lawyers who are like, in the background, like, you know, getting everything together. I really like the background piece. I like thinking about what you are trying to do and how does it play out? And what kind of challenges might you face? And what kind of background materials can you prepare someone with? And so I think over time, I've realized, it's not the actual performance piece that I enjoy, although sometimes that can be really nice. I actually just really enjoy the preparation and the thought exercise that's involved in it. Sometimes the production of curriculum, like I sometimes dip my toe into, like the artistic side of the world. I feel like curriculum development is like artwork where you produce something and it's like, here's the tangible evidence of my labor, as opposed to the kind of experiential part that goes on in the classroom.
Dave
Oh, man, you're speaking my language now. That's interesting to hear, because, I mean, I see you as being one of the most interesting educators in that regard. You really seem to be excellent at the delivery, the performance, and the curriculum design also. If your experience is like mine, it can be a challenge to work both those hats at the same time.
Stephen
Honestly, I find the performance piece difficult. So for me, it took a long time to resolve being like a gay man in front of a class. That identity piece was really hard, and I didn't want it involved at all in my teaching. There was a lot of mental effort about how I just portray myself as an individual that people would connect with, but also that they wouldn't necessarily have difficulty with me being gay. So, I feel like there was a lot of performance in that it made it an extra cognitive piece of how am I portraying myself. Simultaneously, I'm trying to make sure that they're learning, you know, the intermediate disturbance hypothesis, and it's just like, there's a lot going on in those two things that made it just not as pleasurable as some people find it. After like a decade of that tension is part of why I didn't necessarily go towards the performance piece of teaching as much.
Dave
That's fascinating. I'd love to talk to you more about that. That's interesting, like how identity I mean, shapes, obviously, who we are as an educator, but how different identities intersect with the role of an educator.
Stephen
Right, like, women and minorities. I feel like with mine, it could be like a hidden component, but we hear lots of studies looking at women and minorities in front of a classroom and the extra difficulties they face. I feel like that's just this unfortunate overlap with the fact that they have to deal with his added difficulties. At the same time, they're trying to manage student learning. We also talk about the benefit of having diverse audiences in front of students. I think those are, you know, some things that are kind of woven into the situation of having diverse faculty teaching or instructors teaching.
Dave
Yeah, you mentioned “connection” as this key keyword for you in your teaching. Could you share what connection looks like for you in your practice?
Stephen
So one of the things in teaching science to non-scientists, I feel like one of the things I tackled earlier on was this idea of subject anxiety. And so I was getting a lot of feedback from students about when they were coming into the class that they were scared. They wouldn't say scared, they would say that they were anxious. Like, ‘science isn't my forte or that ‘I've never really done well in science courses.’ And so I feel like there's a potential barrier between the instructor and the students because they're anxious about how they're going to perform and whether or not they're capable of succeeding. That has been shown to impact their ability to succeed. I've always been asking how to reduce that kind of subject anxiety. I’ve looked at things like how do you incorporate comics as a way of softening the subject matter so that people are more engaged by it? I did a whole video series of me in weird places where it was all green screen. The idea is if your instructor is willing to do that, then surely it's not difficult to ask them questions, right? There's no barrier to them in that, ‘Oh, he's a scientist, and I'm going to look stupid in front of him.’ Instead, he's looking stupid in front of me. So like, I don't have to worry about it being something that I can't do. Right. So I've always tried to figure out, like, how do you make connections with people. It facilitates the ability to ask for help. And to take risks in trying to convey what you understand, right?
Because I feel that part of participating in the conversation is how you help grow as an intellectual, I would say, maybe that's one of my tendencies. Personally, when I'm learning something, I like to talk about it, get corrected, and then have a discussion and dialogue. And if you're afraid of showing your ignorance, then it's really difficult because it still remains hidden, right? And so to me, it is about how do you create an environment where they do feel connected, where they can feel connected with each other? When you confront that misconception, that's really where some significant learning can occur.
Dave
Yeah, absolutely. It almost sounds like you're talking a bit about modeling vulnerability as a posture toward learning itself.
Stephen
Right. I would say that I definitely did not have that terminology or that thought process at the time. But I feel like some of the conversations that have gone on with authors like Brene Brown, and, you know, thinking about allowing yourself to be vulnerable and connect to students has helped me to think about it maybe in similar terms.
Dave
Yeah. Vulnerability is probably not generally a scientist’s favorite word?
Stephen
Well, we have thought about having some workshops on that. But I think we sometimes talk about it with regards to how you have difficult conversations in the classroom, right? But it really does boil down to some of that being about vulnerability. That's also around kind of the intellectual components of being able to be wrong, and how you grow from that. So there are concepts of failing forward or failing fast or growth mindsets, right? And how do you help people to realize that it's not a condition of being either good in math or not good in math or good in science or not good at science? It's how do you grow what you have to be better?
Dave
Yeah, oh, that would be an interesting conversation to have around the scientific process itself. Some might argue this is based around an intellectual humility, of understanding that we don't understand and know that we don't know and constantly trying to engage the unknowing with things that we do know, to try, to build on that with solid evidence.
Stephen
There's an article that is basically on stupidity in science. It's a one-page description of regrets of a professional who was talking about his experience in grad school and realized that the ability to handle your own ignorance allows you to be successful in science. So it was talking about why some people make it and some people don't. And this was one of the aspects of the ability to be okay with realizing that you don't know the answer. Being willing to push that boundary is what allows you to be successful. So it's just, I think, an interesting take for students to realize that successful scientists recognize that they don't know and be okay with it.
Dave
How have your ideas about these things changed over time?
Stephen
Well, like what the identity piece, I feel like, there's definitely a component of feeling like it was just information, but they didn't really need to know me and to know aspects about who I am. And I feel like that's, you know, more especially in an online environment. I feel like there was a time when I wondered how you most interestingly convey this content, and you can totally do it divorced from identity and the connection piece is the part that helps to bridge those who are not already passionate about the topic. That's what's going to get them to connect with it. And so just figuring out how we humanize the digital experience is, that's been one progression, I would say.
One of the other ones I would say is my thinking about educator development because a lot of my work is working with faculty about how to improve their practice. I feel like that progression has been one of being rooted in a kind of best practice, or being very prescriptive, to actually having conversations with faculty about what it is that they value, and then figuring out how that ties into the primary literature or into and to various literature's, in general. There are times when you want to know just like, what are some of the things that people have learned that are best that have been shown in the literature with regards to having discussions in class. But it's really different. When thinking about life as an individual, I'm interested in having discussions with students, and identifying that as actually a pedagogical approach that you want to expand because that's what you're actually rooted in. That's what you're going to put the time in. That's what's going to define your actual classroom experience. So instead of someone coming in and being like, actually, you need to use whiteboards more. Yes, whiteboards can be effective, but you actually have to figure out what your identity is as an instructor, and then go from there. I just feel like that's so much more powerful.
Dave
That's really quite profound because they do seem to have eager tentativeness to “best practices.” It reminds me of one of my favorite authors, Parker Palmer, he has a book called “The Courage to Teach.” And he talks a lot about how a lot of and how we as educators, essentially, teach from who we are, as you're talking about that very thing, starting with the heart of the individual educator first and what their goals are and then building technological support.
Stephen
I totally remember having conversations with other educators, then pushing back on the best practices. And, like, I feel like this comes from a place of being in the sciences for, you know, so long of like, what, like, you measure things and we find out what is more effective. That's how we improve. And just disregarding this aspect of what would nurture a faculty member. I mean, like when we think about, like, how much time faculty spend on improving their teaching like they're balancing out research and service and all of these other components. And so like, in order for them to really grow, it has to be the thing that you're super passionate about. This is how I actually connect with people. And so I feel like the discussions or arguments we had about best practices and whether or not that's a valuable framework to go from is actually just moving in a different direction from this conversation of like, why would you just not focus on the thing that people are passionate about? Right? So it's not that it's incorrect, it's just not really looking at it from the same perspective. And so, it is, you know, sometimes a little painful to be like, oh, yeah, I think I said something like that. You know, like, a few years ago, and yeah, so it has been interesting.
Dave
Yeah, absolutely. And I certainly then, early on, in my work in instructional design, I was a strong proponent of best practices. I’m critical of that, lately, myself also. So, could you tell us a little bit more about your settings? I think when you were at first MSU, you were primarily teaching and an instructor and now you do a lot of educator development. I guess we could say, and you also do a lot of design and curricular work, and also some teaching, I believe, or
Stephen
…up until this last summer,
Dave
okay. Okay, gotcha. Okay. So could you tell us a little bit about your, your setting in which you're in, and then these different hats that you're wearing now?
Stephen
Part of my role is in the Center for Integrative Studies in general science. So that's the Gen Ed Science course for non-scientists. And a lot of my work in the last few years has been focused on curriculum reform. And I have to say, that's probably some of the most rewarding work that I've done. Because it's, I just love it. The idea of so thinking about, if you have a three-class sequence, like how do students progress between those classes? And then like, how do you resolve to have different faculty and their identity and their topic? And so it's just been, I feel fascinating about like, how do you first off physically map the curriculum? How do you get faculty buy-in for various curricular reforms? How do you build a community around curriculum, like, I'm interested in those, those ideas, and so that work has been really, really rewarding? And then I'd say in college, that setting is looking at how technology is a filter or a lever for impacting student learning. And so I get a lot of help from faculty to think about technology tools that they could use in order to facilitate things like discussions online. But a lot of that work has also been focused on accessibility.
I feel like that has been an incredible lens that also had a lot of unique challenges about how you get people to buy into doing extra labor for, for accessibility, for widening their impact on their curriculum. And so like, we had gone through many different lenses of like, oh, well, accessibility is about compliance, and then looking at how that impacted faculty buy-in. And, you know, how it was limiting their participation, because as a concept, it's not very engaging, and then, you know, shifting over to more of a social justice piece, or going even into an equity viability piece, I feel has really allowed people to, to think about that, and see how that is actually aligned with their beliefs, and how that type of work is important.
I feel like there's, you know so that accessibility work was like, how do we make sure that all the digital pieces that we're making are accessible to, so there ADA, so Americans with Disabilities Act, so it responds to that? But also, you know, what we've found is that those accommodations helped all students. And so, you know, it kind of broadened to this idea of going from an idea of compliance to really how do we impact a larger number of students. So that's kind of that work. And then my new role, as the assistant dean, it's focused on STEM teaching and learning. It's really focused on the STEM building, and then figuring out how a single location can bring faculty and disciplines from across the STEM disciplines and even outside of STEM, to talk with each other and to learn from each other, and to better use the physical spaces in their pedagogical approach.
So, you know, when you have small groups of people, how do you foster discussion in that and then build ways of reporting out to a larger community is the, you know, is what we're working on. And so the STEM building has lots of innovative approaches to their classroom design. And so figuring out how do we train faculty to do that is, you know, is, again, you can see a hopefully the parallel between what's going on in the center for, you know, building a community around curriculum, and then in the college about how do we as a community, figure out what are the standards for the curriculum that we're creating? And then the STEM building is how do we have conversations in typically siloed communities that can help us to improve our practice. So there's a lot about communication. And probably a parallel, you know, connection. Right?
How do we have connections between faculty members from diverse groups?
How do we connect it to the technologies that we use?
And how do we make better impacts with the students that we're serving?
--
Don't forget to celebrate individuals you see making a difference in teaching, learning, or student success at MSU with #iteachmsu's Thank an Educator initiative.
