It started off with a simple question, one of the most basic questions of history: How does a single cell become a human – a human who has trillions of cells with hundreds of different functions?
Sure, science has answered the questions of mitosis and cell differentiation, but Robert Winning was more concerned with the cell communication.
For instance, the central nervous system has something called the neural crest. From this crest, cells migrate out to different parts of the human body, forming a variety of structures from the teeth to bones of the face and skull and many more. Should anything disrupt these cells there is a high chance of major tragic facial abnormalities. According to Winning, “cleft pallet is the least problematic possibility.”
The professor explained these cells depend on cues for migration.
“I just started looking for proteins that work communication,” he said.
Rather than stealing some of his students away in the night and preforming tests on them, Winning tests on frogs.
“Frogs are easy to raise in a lab and are similar to humans,” he said. The time, energy and money the scientist has put into his tests have paid off.
“I found a family of receptor proteins that were involved in the neural crest,” he said. However, as a scientist, he knows answering one question only leads to more questions and more work. He has been studying this family of receptors for 17 years.
Winning said he considers himself fortunate to have found a place at Eastern Michigan University for that exact reason: He gets to work on his own experiments.
“I like to be playing in the lab,” he said. “Lab is fun time for me.”
When Winning isn’t in the lab, he can be found teaching Biology 110, genetics, a graduate course in cell biology and a joint grad-undergrad class in developmental biology. It’s the latter of the three Winning said is his favorite.
While Winning spoke about how much he loves his job, he also acknowledged that teaching such different levels can be difficult at times.
“Especially since the material I teach to the grad students is the same basic material I teach to the 110,” he added.
Even worse, he said, “Remembering what I said to whom. It’s always difficult with a freshmen class anyways, because it’s not like I forget everything I know. There’s a fine line there between teaching too much and not enough. It’s tricky to do.”
Winning’s difficulty teaching at a freshman level is understandable when one considers how much schooling he’s had. The professor earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Calgary in Canada and his doctorate at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. Despite all he knows from his extensive education, Winning is still able to communicate thoughts and ideas effectively to his students.
The proof of this is seen in his two awards. In 2009, Winning received the Rob Collins Distinguished Faculty Award for Senior Teaching. Fast forward to this year, the instructor received the Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year award.
These awards come from dedication to one’s students. Winning admitted he doesn’t always get to spend as much time doing research as he would like.
“When finding the balance… teaching tends to come first because it impacts more students,” he said. “The main reason I don’t teach spring and summer is because it’s my time to do research.”
It’s understandable Winning would want to leave time to do research, since his classes and experiments aren’t the only things he does during the fall and winter semesters. Winning brings up the fact that faculty are also required to do service.
“Last year or the year before I was on 13 different committees,” he said.
Winning has served on faculty senate, the Parsons Center governing board, the Mark Jefferson advisory committee and is chair of the Biology Department Curriculum and Instruction committee and the co-chair of the Academic Affairs Strategic Planning Committee.
As part of these different departments, Winning’s focus is academics and student retention.
“We need to monitor what our students are learning,” he said.
As part of this, Winning explained how his freshman Biology 110 class recently turned in a lab report that is being reviewed for student writing skills at the beginner biology level as compared to the more advanced undergraduate students.
“It’s important to me that Academic Affairs has a plan,” he said. “Academics is the engine that drives the university… Anything that I can do to ensure Academic Affairs assumes its rightful place, I will do.”
Part of ensuring academics is constantly improving to be the best it can is by trying new teaching methods to see what works best. For instance, Winning has been co-teaching Biology 110 with Jamin Eisenbach. Winning is the main instructor for the first half of the semester-long course, the focus being molecular biology. Eisenback takes over the second half with more of a focus on ecology and environmental biology.
“Even though we have slightly different approaches, we share an educational philosophy… and it worked,” Winning said. “We each have our area of expertise. We each get to teach to our strengths.”
Winning has also been incorporating technology into the classroom.
“I embrace technology,” he said. “I try to bring it in gradually. I was one of the first people to do podcast. I was in the very first cohorts to develop online courses.”
Winning said he finds a lot of benefits to online teaching.
“It’s almost counter-intuitive, but I got to understand my students better in online courses,” he said.
As for the podcasts, Winning said, “It has driven classroom changes. Class time is used to teach concepts, not work with the content. I started having class discussions and problem solving.”
Winning also uses remote clickers, which his students use to answer questions.
“What I like about clickers is if the majority of the class got a question wrong, I learn from the clickers as much as the students do [about what they’ve learned].”
Winning said part of the reason why he is so able to put so much time and effort into teaching is because he loves what he does.
“One of my basic life philosophies is work is something you’ll spend a large amount of your life doing,” he said. “You better love it. If you take advantage of university and critical thinking and analyzing skill, you can go anywhere.”
