Pechenik on human environmental impact, retirement plans

PECHENIK continued from page 22 and in a convincing way about the results that you obtained. I was hired to teach a marine biology course. I was like, “How can I come up with a question that there’s no way that students can look up?” As an optional exercise, I asked students to write a poem about some aspect of the topic that we’ve been talking about. And students put in an amazing amount of work. Long after the course is over, the only thing that they remember about marine biology is the poem that they wrote. So I wrote a paper about that for a teaching journal.

When I started teaching, students didn’t like the textbook we were using at all, the book I had used as a student. So I wrote a short chapter on each major animal group that I wanted to cover in the class, and I drew some pictures and had it printed out. One day, somebody from a local publisher, Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, said, “Mr. Pechenik, you could turn this into a pretty good book.”

I thought, “Invertebrate biology doesn’t change very much, and so I’d only have to go through this once.” But with the rise of molecular research, there have been just a lot of changes over the past several decades, especially about our understanding of how the different invertebrate groups are related to each other. So that book is now a seventh edition.

I noticed students were having a really hard time reading the research papers and writing about them. There was a committee established, many years ago, that led a really wonderful program for faculty and students called Writing Across the Curriculum. When the director left, I somehow became the director of that program for six years. Not only did we learn a lot by doing it, but it presented just a wonderful opportunity for faculty from all different departments to work together on a common cause.

Grin discusses experience at TEMS, as TA

GRIN continued from page 22

“If you are doing something in which you are never making mistakes, it’s probably not that hard, right?” Grin said. “If you make a mistake, it’s very important to learn from it and think about why did something not go the way [you] wanted it to, what factors contributed to that, what can [you] do to try and avoid that in the future.”

He added that sometimes, in the medical field, some things are outside of your control, and it’s frequently better just to move past these sorts of errors than to dwell on them.

“But there’s also a level of not being so hard on yourself where you’re beating yourself up again and again about something that happened months and months ago that you have little control over,” Grin said. “So I think that it’s a mix of taking a lot of responsibility for things that are under your control and then also realizing that sometimes outcomes aren’t going to be the way you want them to be.”

Grin also mentioned that he appreciates the learning and teaching aspects of being on TEMS.

“I … co-taught [the EMT class] with the instructor at the time, [who’s] now retired,” Grin said. “He was the one who taught me back in my freshman year when I got my [EMT] license. Working with students has definitely been a highlight for me. It’s really fun to introduce people to a field that often they know very little about … and people are eager to learn.”

During his college journey, Grin also explored the educational side of his science experiences, becoming a TA for biochemistry and a tutor for the Student Accessibility and Academic Resources Center. He is interested in applying those educational skills to his work with TEMS.

“At TEMS, a big focus of mine has been trying to pro - mote more training and education … to mentor younger students and get them excited about things,” he said.

Grin said that underclassmen can easily become discouraged by early-level STEM courses.

“You get a lot of freshmen and sophomores who come in and have this idea that they are excited about science and want to do it,” he said. “But they come into these introductory classes and some of them start getting worried and think … ‘This is so hard. I’m not enjoying this. I shouldn’t go into this field.’”

He believes that learning in STEM fields is difficult for everyone, and those who succeed are students who develop the skills necessary to do so.

“Yeah, some of these introductory classes can be tough, but not everybody comes in with this natural ability to ‘do science,’ it [takes] a skill set,” Grin said. “You can [teach] people to appreciate the sub -

TD: Do you have any parting thoughts?

JP: What am I going to do now? I’m going to start playing accordion again for square dances and contra dances, which I used to do a long time ago when I was a graduate student. Also a lot of bike riding, and running science writing workshops. I’m going to do one in Copenhagen coming up at the end of May.

I would never have expected to end up doing all the things I ended up doing. Especially once you’re tenured, you really have a lot of freedom to spend your time doing what you think is worthwhile.

Three years or so ago, I came up with the idea of teach- jects and try strategies to grow as learners because I feel like everyone can really succeed in that. It’s just a question of motivating themselves and ing a course about evolution for non-science majors. I do this with Eric Dopman. A lot of the students at the end of the semester say they had no idea that science could be so interesting. They thought it was about memorizing things, but no, it’s about life on our planet and also about the way human beings are affecting the selective forces acting on organisms all over our planet too. having confidence in themselves. I hope I can maybe leave a little bit of a legacy of that, something to pass on to other people.”

So that’s been really satisfying. I really enjoyed the mixture of being able to do research, but also teach in interesting ways and to teach courses that I would not have expected to be teaching initially when I first got here.

s enior Profile: tCu President Jaden Pena fosters understanding and inclusion through his leadership

by Mark Choi Features Editor

“The best compliment that I’ve ever received was from one of my high school musical directors,” Jaden Pena said. “He told me that what he loved most about me was my ability to bridge different communities. And I think that was really an awakening moment for me.”

Indeed, Pena’s time at Tufts has been marked by his commitment to bridging differences and promoting understanding across different communities. As a varsity football player and a tenor for the Beelzebubs, an all-male a cappella group on campus, Pena knows all too well how our identities and interests can be singled out and used to label us.

For Pena, though, it is critical to pursue true interests and passions in the most authentic and truthful way.

“I’d say most people have multiple, different talents that they could be providing for the world that might just be hidden by someone’s inability to push their comfort levels,” Pena said. “When you look at yourself in the mirror at the end of the day, only you know if you’re doing everything that you want to be doing. … Nobody else can extract it from you.”

Academically, he discovered that his two majors, political science and music, sound, and culture, are highly complementary and have deepened his empathy for others.

“In theater classes, people share different stories and share different experiences,” Pena said. “Through that exploration and through those classes, I’ve gained various other perspectives that I never would have [otherwise]. … I think that [it] definitely shaped who I am as a person and how I look at the world, which then definitely affects how I look at politics in general.”

With this understanding in mind, Pena ran on a platform that centered around diversity, equity and inclusion for the Tufts Community Union Senate presidential election last spring. Relatedly, a centerpiece of his campaign was his promise of advocacy for and representation of the student body to the university administration, Pena recounted.

“When I was running, I didn’t just run on a platform of ‘I want to do this. And I wish I could do this. And this is a dream that I’m going to sell you,’” he said. “I really ran on a platform that was like, ‘I am going to do everything that I can do to advocate for the needs and wants of this community.’”

True to his promise, Pena was guided by the mission to bridge the gap between the student body and the university administration throughout this school year.

“Going to meetings with administrators, I knew that if I were advocating for something that would enhance student life, I knew that I had the support of thousands of undergraduates behind me, which was more empowering than pressurizing,” he said.

In this respect, Pena added that his understanding of equity has underlied his projects and initiatives, including various town halls to foster greater understanding across the university’s communities.

“Equity, to me, is [about] ensuring that the resources that Tufts is providing are accessible to all communities on our campus,” Pena said.

To this end, he spearheaded and helped organize many efforts as the TCU president, such as combating food insecurity issues. As a TCU senator last school year, Pena also chaired the committee on community diversity and inclusion, and he served as the diversity officer on the executive board of the senate.

Reflecting on this school year, Pena explained and cited the TCU senate’s communal efforts and many accomplishments.

“I don’t want to take the credit of others, but I get to, being the president, be involved in every single project in one way or another,” Pena said. “Our outreach committee did town halls that had different community senators have little roundtable discussions. … There was a Black faculty meet-and-greet that was hosted by two senators [and] that was unbelievably successful.”

In light of his involvement with the student government, Pena further elaborated on his understanding of good leadership.

“Good leadership, to me, is taking the passion and inspiration — or taking the passion and devotion of others — and let see PENA, page 29