The first time I ever wrote a song about biology
was when I was a post-doc.
So I was post-docking in a rather large lab
and it seemed like somebody was always leaving.
And so my advisor was throwing farewell parties all the time
and I thought it would be really nice if at some point
I could write a song about the project of the person who was leaving.
People would always just laugh at the ways that I could rhyme
malignant and indignant and things like that.
So it got me to thinking that maybe I could
use song to help get across ideas in biology.
So when I came to CSUN and started teaching
the non-majors biology class, Bio 100,
I started to write a few songs about some of the harder concepts
and performing them in class.
My hope is that by hearing the songs,
if they're catchy enough for you to keep on singing over and over again,
you're not going to forget that.
And so one thing that I wanted to do to try and complement the songs
was to also provide a mini tutorial
just so that they really did understand everything that was going into the lyrics.
So I was really excited when I saw that
CSUN ScholarWorks had a program.
They were looking for proposals for somebody who was going to create
a digital learning object.
I pitched the grant as a Biology Through Song project
that would help illustrate some of the more difficult concepts
to my non-majors.
And I proposed that I would have not just the song
but an accompanying tutorial
and then a set of assessment questions that would actually be able to
assess whether they are picking up these concepts
and they liked it. And so I got to put that together.
I was never a singer and I didn't even try to pick up the guitar
until I was in graduate school
which it's a little late to really get that good at it I think.
So, my musical ability is quite limited but what I don't lack is
an ability to go out there and be embarrassed and not worry about it that much.
