Concordia College’s capstone Neurochemistry class taught by Dr. Julie Mach is the apex of a liberal arts education for a science major. It is both a class that pushes students outside of their comfort zone and a class that warrants great fun to be had. In this class, myself, my thirteen classmates, and Dr. Mach explored research about the brain’s mechanisms in disorders including obesity, Alzheimer’s, bulimia, Parkinson’s, schizophrenia, autism, and concussions. The structure of this class was far from a traditional lecture/assessment setting and unlike anything I have ever experienced before. Basically, an outsider could call us some brain nerds reading papers written by brain nerds with their PhD’s. In order to express my love for the class and reflect on how the class changed me as a student. I’ll explain an average week in the course.
Monday:
For me, Mondays were the most difficult day by far. The mission of the previous weekend was to read and analyze a 8-25 page paper on that week’s neurological topic. This sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. These papers were dense and complex yet often revolutionary. I would come to class feeling like I was completely lost in the paper yet in the back of my head had a feeling that these findings have huge implications in the science, medical, and social words. When we met as a class, we would spend the day discussing what we felt was important in the paper. What I loved about Monday’s was that we all were in the same boat: lost and looking for answers. We had the opportunity to sit in a circle, share our interpretations, and extrapolate the key concepts on the papers. As the day ended, we narrowed down our focus to 14 topics that we wanted to further research because we felt that they were critical in our understanding of the paper. Usually, as a type-A science major, the lack of understanding that accompanied Monday’s would send me into a panic. For this class, Monday’s were calming because I knew that this lack of understanding was a place to grow and that Dr. Mach would guide us in the right direction.
Wednesday:
Wednesdays were a day for everyone to live in the limelight. Between Monday and Wednesday, we all would research one specific topic related to the paper we are focusing on for the week and Dr. Mach would arrange “speed dating”. During speed dating, we would get four minutes with each other student were we could share what we personally researched to strengthen the entire class’s understanding on the neurological disorder. By the end, we had learned 14 new pieces of information related to the neurochemistry behind the diseases. No matter a person’s background or personality, everyone could positively contribute to the conversations. I always left Wednesday feeling full of knowledge and an understanding of the research I had feared just two days before.
Friday:
Fridays in Neurochemistry were my favorite days of the class. We would move across campus to some comfy chairs and discuss. Rather than discussing purely the science behind these neurological disorders, we had the reign to discuss every aspect of them. This includes treatments, ethics, and social factors. It’s easy to be scientists studying the brain and what’s malfunctioning in it. But to truly help the population, I think it’s extremely important to examine the entire person and the life that they live. On Fridays, we spent hours having meaningful and deep conversations about neurological disorders that affect millions of people each year. Even if we disagreed on a topic, the atmosphere of the class was one that encouraged resolution of conflict and understanding. My favorite time of my school weeks were Friday afternoons where I could curl up in a chair with a cup of coffee and learn from my brilliant classmates and hear their opinions.
One would think that lecture style classrooms would be the most effective when learning about something as objective as the brain. After taking this neurochemistry course, I would disagree. I learned more about the brain and its disorders in this class than my entire career as a Neurochemisty major at Concordia. I owe this to my professor and my classmates. Without Dr. Mach’s innovation and atypical approach to the class, I my mind would have been stuck in the walls of a PowerPoint lecture. Without my classmates, my own knowledge wouldn’t have been tested and I wouldn’t have gained knowledge from a wide range of experiences.
To Concordia, to Dr. Mach, to my classmates, I say thank you. Thank you for pushing my mental limits and thank you for all of the new knowledge on my favorite organ: the brain.
