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University of Washington Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Undergraduate Biological Sciences Education Programs

News and Deadlines

Upcoming Events

UW-HHMI Biology Undergraduate Research Symposium
See you in Hitchcock Hall on Friday, October 16th!
About the UW-HHMI Website!
Welcome to the our website. It is designed to be more active and informative. We hope you enjoy it!

Application Deadlines

November 7, 2009
Biology Fellows Program
October 31, 2009
Integrative Research Internship Program

News/Awards

Congratulations to Krystal St. Julien!
Krystal St. Julien was awarded the prestigious Gilliam Fellowship, which provides full support for up to five years of study toward a Ph.D.
Northwest Regional Developmental Biology Conference
Eight former and current UW-HHMI Integrative Research Interns (Rachel Denney, Cynthia Hsu, Daniel Kashima, Yunfei Li, Philip Louie, Tanya Swartz, Gerard Wallace, Tei Yoko) attended the 2009 Northwest Regional Developmental Biology Conference on March 18-21 at Friday Harbor Labs.
In print...

Read the article about the UW-HHMI Biology Fellows Program published in CBE.
Congratulations to the 2008/09 Honors, Awards, Prizes, and Scholarship Receipients
PhiBetaKappa: Katelyn Keyloun, Katherine Nutsch, Anna O'Brien, Shelby Semon

Casey Award: Haley Lindsey, Cynthia Hsu

Porath Johnson Award: Shelby Semon

Sargent Award: Cynthia Hsu, Haley Lindsey, Susan Taylor

Mary Gates Leadership: Angel Corral

Mary Gates Research Scholarship: Hau Do, Jessica Hadwin, Cynthia Hsu, Daniel Kashima, Kuzma Kovzun, Anna Le, Haley Lindsey, Philip Louie, Rachel Simon, Erica Tartaglione, Susan Taylor, Gerard Wallace, Brandon Wu

HHMI EXROP: Jessica Hadwin

The Future Faculty Fellows Program aims to prepare postdoctoral scientists for successful careers that combine research, service, mentoring, and teaching. There are two components to the program - a September workshop on teaching and career development, and a teaching apprenticeship program that provides a faculty-mentored experience in designing and teaching an undergraduate course.

Slideshow image

Postdoctoral scientists and 2009 Future Faculty Fellow Teaching Apprentices Alaron Lewis, Marcia Brown and Delip Garikipati designed and taught an undergrad course “Losing our minds: The biology of brain disease”

Future Faculty Fellows Workshop - September 2010

The Future Faculty Fellows Workshop is a 2-day program that focuses on providing participants with teaching and job-seeking skills, and places a strong emphasis on introducing strategies for improving biology teaching at the undergraduate level. The workshop is held in September. Call for applications will be distributed through the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs and the UW Postdoctoral Association in August. See the Web sites for those organizations to get on their mailing lists.

Apply: Application for the September workshop will be available in early August.

FFF attendees

Postdocs from the UW and affiliated research institutions attended the 2009 Future Faculty Fellows Workshop. Over the course of 2 days, 53 postdocs learned about scientific teaching, preparing for the job hunt, and other career-related issues and opportunities.

Jessica Yellin

UW faculty members Jennifer Nemhauser and Bertil Hille (both on the left) led a session on "How to Write a Research Statement" for a job application.

Jessica McAbee Bill Mahoney

Postdoc Nels Elde (right) introduced the senior faculty panelists: UW Genome Sciences Chair Bob Waterston, UW Physiology & Biophysics Chair Stan Froehner, and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Member Susan Parkhurst.

Discussion on Family and Career

Postdocs and faculty relax at the Workshop Reception with UW Biology Chair Ray Huey and Associate Dean of the Graduate School Thomas Gething.

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Future Faculty Fellows Teaching Apprenticeship

Postdocs who complete the Future Faculty Fellows Workshop may apply for opportunities to develop and teach an undergraduate course or seminar as a faculty-mentored experience. The program involves training in course design and implementation one quarter before the fellows teach their courses. Feedback on classroom presentations, assignments, and other aspects of teaching are provided as the courses are taught during winter or spring quarter.

For Additional Information:

Contact the UW-HHMI Postdoctoral Programs Organizer. Phone (206) 543-5273

Download the Future Faculty Fellows Workshop and Teaching Apprenticeship brochure.

Courses Taught by the FFF Teaching Apprentices:

Since 2004, 81 postdocs from over 30 different UW and FHCRC departments have participated in the Teaching Apprenticeship Program. Including the 2010 apprentices, the postdocs will have designed and taught a total of 27 innovative seminar courses for UW undergraduates! Their courses enrich our undergraduate curriculum and provide opportunities for students to learn about "hot" research topics and benefit from highly interactive discussions with their instructors and peers. Courses provided by our FFF postdocs include:

For Winter 2010:

  • Fixing a Broken Heart: Modern therapies for cardiovascular disease
  • Biotech, Biofuels, and Biodiversity: Challenges for Agriculture in the 21st Century

For Spring 2010:

  • Humans and Microbes: A love/hate relationship
  • Hot Topics in Disease Prevention
  • Sense and Sensibility: Sensory disorders and treatment

In Previous Years:

  • Evolution of Immunity: From microbes to mammals
  • Losing Our Minds: The biology of brain diseases
  • Environmental Challenges: Are there solutions?
  • Neurological Disorders: When ethics and biology collide
  • Cancer: Conquering the enemy within
  • Skin Senses: From receptors to perceptions
  • Cancer: Bad genes or bad environment?
  • The Evolutionary Arms Race between Hosts and Pathogens
  • The Future of Our Planet: Climate, ecosystems, and society
  • The Yin and Yang of Hormones
  • The Neurobiology of Love, Attraction, and Addiction
  • Beyond the Sequence: Chromosomes, epigenetics, and disease
  • More than Just Sex: Sex hormones in reproduction and disease
  • Microassassins: Pathogenic biology in the lab and community
  • Molecular Biology of Aging
  • What Determines Your Sex? Genetics, molecular, and physiological aspects
  • The Biology of Disease Epidemics
  • Mammalian Reproductive Biology
  • Extreme Biology: Molecular basis for survival in extreme environments
  • Genetic and Epigenetic Basis of Disease
  • Sensing the Environment
  • Controversies in Biology: GMOs and Tissue Engineering
What Participants Say about the FFF Teaching Apprenticeships:

Although I had team-taught lecture-based courses before, the FFFP gave me my first experiences assembling a course from scratch, teaching well outside of my area of expertise, designing creative assignments, developing rubrics, and working with students in a seminar setting.

At first, I wasn't sure I liked teaching. But after being involved in the FFF, I learned that there are different ways to make your teaching exciting and interesting, both for the students and instructor. I taught a course using the same principles incorporated into our FFF course. My students loved it!

This was an excellent program. I enjoyed it immensely and working with two other post docs made it feasible to take on an entire course while still maintaining the research productivity expected by my post doc mentor. I also feel this was a huge leg up in getting a position.

I obtained my PhD abroad without teaching experience. The apprenticeship program helped me to understand the teaching system in America. The experience let me experience and really enjoy teaching and not be afraid to apply for positions related to teaching. I think this experience will also help search committees feel comfortable nominating me for faculty positions involving teaching undergraduates.

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Faculty
Merrill Hille

Merrill Hille is a Professor in the Department of Biology and a developmental biologist who studies cell migration during zebrafish morphogenesis. She is the Program Organizer of the Future Faculty Fellows Program and the primary mentor of the FFF Teaching Apprentices.

Karen E. Petersen

Karen E. Petersen is a Lecturer in the Department of Biology. She has extensive experience teaching undergraduate majors and non-majors in animal physiology and morphology. She has been co-organizer of the FFF program since 2003.

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Postdoc & Grad Resources for Teaching and Job Seeking

The resources available to learn about career and teaching issues are numerous and online resources are rapidly increasing in number. The trick is to find the references that offer the most practical and timely advice for you. Below are references and websites that have been recommended by colleagues in the biological sciences.

Scientific Societies, University & Agencies for Education

General to all fields:

By Research Fields:

Guides/Strategies for Informed & Innovative Undergraduate Education:

UW Centers or Websites
Books on Career Development & Teaching
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