Committing to the Liberal Arts Path

To learn what it’s like for physiologists to teach and conduct research at a liberal arts college, APS Executive Director Scott Steen, CAE, FASAE, spoke to two professors about their experience: Scott D. Kirkton, PhD, FAPS, professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Union College in Schenectady, New York, and Heidi Walsh, PhD, associate professor of biology and department chair at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. In their wide-ranging conversation, they discussed the advantages and challenges of working at a liberal arts college and what physiologists should consider before choosing that path. Here’s an excerpt of their conversation:

Steen: How would you compare and contrast your experience in a liberal arts environment to being in a major research university or institution?

Walsh: I think the experience feels a bit more holistic. There is a lot more focus on developing you as a leader at a liberal arts college. You’re expected to do research; you’re expected to teach and get involved in service, where maybe there’s less bureaucracy and less people to do different jobs. It’s expected as part of our community that people will step up and help support the mission of the college and support the overall liberal arts philosophy that we have here and not just be laser-focused on their niche. We’re expected to have our hands across the institution, which I don’t think was expected as much in R1 settings.

Steen: I’d imagine you both have to teach much more broadly. 

Kirkton: I would say that physiology is that really amazing field in biology that connects ecology to cell biology. And when you’re in a liberal arts college, you’re usually in a biology department, whereas an R1 school might have a department of ecology and evolution, it might have a department of cellular biology, and it might have a department of physiology. I’m biased obviously, but I feel like the physiologists are the glue that holds the department together. We’re able to connect with our colleagues both who do subcellular work and do ecological work. So, I think it’s really valuable to have a physiologist that’s broadly trained and help students and colleagues make these connections back and forth. 

I’ve had the ability to teach other classes like a bio dance class to [general education] students about anatomy and physiology and how that works with dance—I teach it with a dance professor. I think that holistic view of the students is really interesting. I get to go see my students at their sporting events. I get to see them perform in plays. Their science part is a really important part to them, but it’s not their whole thing. I found it to be really valuable in terms of helping train the next generation of, not just scientists, but the next generation of people who are scientifically literate.

Steen: There seems to be a real community advantage to being in the liberal arts environment, as well as other advantages.

Walsh: There’s kind of a spirit of entrepreneurship. If you have something you want to achieve, it’s on you to find a path to make that happen, although there’s lots of support in different ways. So, there’s a lot of freedom in that, which is really nice. In our department, and I think across the college, we put a lot of trust in our faculty as far as how they run their courses and their research programs. The disadvantage is you do lack that community from time to time within your research discipline. I’m the only person that teaches physiology normally and I’m on my own in that respect. But we have a really active APS chapter in Indiana, so that’s been a great way for me, and my students as well, to see the discipline in a broader sense. 

Kirkton: Most liberal arts colleges aren’t being judged on whether you can get external funding. So for tenure, you do get to pursue what you want to study. The trade-off is you have to find projects or themes that aren’t going to be scooped by people who have lots of postdocs and grad students. So, it does make the initial science fun—it’s like a kid going out and exploring, just asking really interesting questions. The trade-offs are that you have less resources, less start-up; typically, you don’t have students that stay for five or six years like a grad student. So, training is a big issue. I’ve created a model where I pair younger students with older students to build a lab community and increase the training between the students. 

Steen: And you tailored your research focus around the environment you’re in.

Kirkton: I study insects, which are easy to keep and relatively cheap compared to vertebrates. There’s no [Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee] regulations. Students can easily work with them as opposed to having a mouse colony or where the costs would be really large. 

Walsh: My lab studies GnRH neurons and their responses at the cellular level to various forms of stress, particularly endoplasmic reticulum stress, in the context of obesity and various diseases that can influence cell signaling. So, our model is a cell culture model, which probably is a bit more expensive than insect models, but I was fortunate that Wabash already had most of the equipment necessary in order to run a cell culture lab. 

Steen: What kind of advice would you give someone who is at a large research university who might be thinking about a liberal arts college as a career path?

Kirkton: For our school, in order to get tenure you need to be a good teacher, but you also need to be a successful researcher. Ideally, a candidate that would apply for a job at our school would have some teaching experience—it may not be a lot, but something so that we know that they want to do that. And they would also have a successful research program in which they could incorporate undergraduates in terms of the scale of it and the resources they would need to be successful. Those are important qualities because we can always mentor someone in getting them to be a better teacher. 

Walsh: I would say maybe to think more broadly about how colleges and higher education work. Especially at a small liberal arts college, you will be called upon to get involved outside of your department. Even as a department chair, you’re kind of the next level of how the college works and how it functions. So, I think having an interest in that and working to support the institution outside of just what you do in your classroom and lab is an important thing. 

This article was originally published in the March 2023 issue of The Physiologist Magazine.