GPI - Ishara Mills-Henry, Professor of Chemistry and Food Science

Adrien Gobin / THE GATEPOST

By Bella Grimaldi Asst. News Editor What is your academic and professional background? My background is in biochemistry. I have a Ph.D. in biochemistry. I actually started off as a molecular biologist. So what does that mean? Really thinking about cells and how things in cells work together to make something alive. And I did a bachelor's and a master's degree in biology at Clark Atlanta University. It's a historically Black university in Atlanta, Georgia, and I had some great professors there. It was a primarily undergraduate institution. They did have some graduate programs. So in many ways, it was kind of like Framingham State. The priority was teaching and then preparing students to go beyond their undergraduate degree. And I had some excellent professors there who really encouraged me to keep going, and I decided to get a Ph.D. from MIT here in Boston. That's what brought me up here. I'm originally from St. Louis, by the way. I came to Boston for my graduate degree, and I stayed. I met my husband, got married, and kind of hung in there. I was looking for what to do next and I said, “I don't want to go into that high-power research-one institution. I am kind of interested in a university like I experienced, and really think about how to mentor students and encourage them to continue with their education, or help them in thinking about their career path and what to do next, because I just had such a positive experience with that.” And so an opportunity came up to come here for a temporary position. And I said, “Let me try it out. I don't know if I would like teaching or not. I want to see how it goes.” I've been here since 2011 and I've been enjoying it. What is your teaching philosophy? I think what I like to try to do now is to really think about what motivates students to learn, trying to figure out how to engage students in what we're teaching them. Where do your interests lie? What are you interested in? What do you want to know more about? And by learning more about what students like to do, that's how I try to incorporate what we're teaching, how to connect what you like, your interests, what motivates you to learn, to the material that we're trying to teach. So that's one thing that I've been really thinking hard about, how to do that even more. I've been thinking also about just building a relationship with students more. Just getting to know them. What's your outside interest in general? We're not just these empty vessels when we come into the classroom to be filled with all the science information. We're human beings. Getting to know the student for who they are and how they learn. What's the most effective way for them to learn and adjust accordingly to try to engage students more? So I've been doing a lot of that. I haven't been teaching this year. I'm working in an administrative position through Academic Affairs, but I still work with faculty members and help mentor them on thinking about student engagement. We call it inclusive pedagogy. Just how to include more students in the classroom, their ideas, their interests, get more students involved in the discussion in the classroom, more active learning strategies. What are your hobbies or something students wouldn't expect about you? I have twins. They are 10 now, and when you're a mom, your own individual hobbies sometimes disappear. But what I've had so much fun doing with them is playing sports. So we'll go play basketball. We'll play soccer. So now I'm learning how to play soccer from them, and they laugh at me because I'll look up YouTube videos of all of the drills they have. So we have fun around that. I guess I would say hanging out with my family is probably my biggest hobby right now. They do take up a lot of the time outside of work. I try to volunteer when I get an opportunity. That's been something else that I used to do a lot as a graduate student, and I haven't had as much time to do. What advice would you give FSU students? This is something that someone told me when I was in school. They said, “Don't let go of your passion. Find that thing that you can't live without, whatever it is, and hold on to it.” Maybe it's a passion for the sciences. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's a passion for helping others. Maybe it's a passion for trying to bring information right to others through writing articles. Whatever it is, hold on to that passion. Don't ever forget it. Success looks different for everyone, right? But if you're contributing to that passion in some way, whatever it is, then that's success.