My Teaching Career

By Chun-fan Chen

From my elementary school to college, my academic performances were usually mediocre in the classes. I was very fortunate to be admitted to the best university in Taiwan—The National Taiwan University (NTU) which became the turning point of my life. I then had a great fortune to study at an elite US university, the University of Michigan, and earned a Ph.D. After two years of postdoctoral research in Germany, I was invited by Florida International University (FIU) to teach Neuroscience, Human Physiology and Animal physiology. My teaching career went through smoothly for 40 years. Though I did not have significant achievements, I am proud of having tens of thousand of students. Now and then, I have had my previous students coming to greet and thank me. Those are my satisfactory moments in my life. At FIU, I was fortunate to be awarded with the Excellence in Advising Award, Excellence in Service Award and Excellence in Teaching Award. I also received Teaching Incentive Award from the State of Florida. Thank God for my very satisfactory career.

After graduating from the NTU with a BS degree in Zoology, I served as a teaching assistant for two years. I then attended the University of Michigan to pursue a Ph.D. I wanted to follow a famous professor for my graduate study. The well-known catfish olfactory (smell) professor showed me his catfish labs and told me to find a good olfactory research project. I was extremely surprised and worried because I did not have a slight idea regarding olfactory research. Could this be the end of my graduate study? My fellow graduate student comforted me and told me, “This is the way the professor guide his graduate students. It is called swim or sink guidance. You need to read a lot of references and come up with a creative idea, then you can swim forward and succeed;otherwise you will sink down and perish.” I diligently read a lot of reference materials. Catfish has two nares (nose channels) each with one inlet and one outlet opening. There are sensitive olfactory receptors in the nares to detect smell substances. Catfish uses the olfactory information to detect the locations of foods, partners and enemies to generate appropriate responses. Two months later, I invented a method to measure the naris water flow. I used the technique to investigate the effect of different smell substances on naris flow rate of catfish. My professor was very satisfied with my research work. He frequently referred my work in his research speeches. Later, he recommended me to a physiology professor who investigated Aplysia giant neurons. I was then very fortunately able to participate in the hot research of eletrophysiological activities in giant neurons. Nervous tissues consist of a very large number of tiny neurons with very complex interactions, therefore, it is almost impossible to study activity of single neuron. Aplysia gastric ganglion has dozens of identifiable giant neurons suitable for investigatingindividual neuron’s functions. I studied activities of pacemaker neurons which generated regular electrical activities. In order to investigate whether pacemaker activity was originated from the pacemaker neuron itself or regulated by other neurons, I developed a technique to isolate individual neuron and studied the pacemaker activities without influence from other neurons. I used these results for my Ph.D. thesis and published a paper in the renowned scientific journal “Nature”.

After receiving my Ph. D, I did my postdoctoral research at the University of Mainz, Germany. One year later, I felt that my German was not proficient to survive well in Germany. I started to search for a faculty position in the USA, but no universities would provide me travel expenses for the interview and seminar presentation. I used the opportunity of attending the Federation Meeting of the Experimental Biology in the USA to present a paper and seek a faculty position. In 1972, Florida International University(FIU) was established in Miami and enrolled 5,000 students. It had a good plan to become a great university. In 2017, FIU became the 10th largest public university in the USA. When Biology Chairman of FIU interviewed me during the Federation meeting and invited me to FIU, I decided to take the position to teach Neuroscience, Human Physiology and Animal Physiology in 1973.

At FIU, I initially concentrated in promoting teaching program. Many undergraduate students wanted to go to medical, dental, or pharmacy schools. I voluntarily served as their advisor and helped established Pre-medical Honor Society, Pre-dental Society. I interacted with numerous medical and dental schools to help students to gain admissions. With my help, a pre-medical student office was established to facilitate pre-medical activities and thus enhanced admission rate. FIU had a faculty award evaluation committee which selected me to receive an Excellent in Advising Award. Besides serving in the departmental, college and university committees, I served as the chairman of the Florida State Course Number Committee for many years as well as a dental school admission test question provider. I was fortunately to be invited to serve on Equipment Award Committee of the National Science Foundation. This Committee consisted of mainly well–known scientists except me. It was my greatest honor to be able to serve with these famous scientists. For many years, FIU had more than one hundred students from Taiwan. I helped Taiwanese students to establish the FIU Taiwanese Students Association and served as their Faculty Advisor from the first year to my retirement. Based on these services, I received the FIU Excellence in Service Award. My teaching productivity was the highest in our department because my courses frequently had a few hundred enrolled students. The vast majority of my student lab equipments were purchased by using equipment grants that I obtained from the National Science Foundation. Since I had heavy Taiwanese accent, I prepared detailed course packs for each course to avoid misunderstanding. The course packs included detailed important current information. Each course pack was printed by the FIU bookstore and sold for less than $10. Since course packs were very economical and contained updated detailed materials, students were very satisfied. One of my students who took my Human Physiology and taught it at another university thanked me told me , “I used your course pack and my students liked it.” My teaching contributions enabled me to receive the FIU Excellent in Teaching Award. I also received the State of Florida Teaching Incentive Award. This was the best reward financially because it awarded $5,000 and added to my annual base salary. Consequently, I received $5,000 every year. Since the State’s retirement payments were calculated based on salaries, I will continue to receive the award money until I pass away. In 2015, I published a 266-page book which contained 86 articles on the biomedical issues.

I really miss my teaching after retirement. Many students were quite intelligent. Since I had very large classes, I limited each student to two questions. After asking the first question, one student said, “My second question is fairly complicated. It has related eight little questions.” I reluctantly answered all his questions. Students can outsmart professors sometimes.