Prof says interpersonal skills key to real-world success
By John Trent
Whether real or simply imagined, there is a certain image we all have of researchers.
It’s work we believe is often done in solitude, in the quiet of a laboratory somewhere. Are there any helpers? Is there any small talk? The mind’s eye doesn’t seem to allow much in the way of human interaction.
The image of the Lone Researcher is a strong one, and it seems to work most days. But then one day you meet Chemistry Professor Suk-Wah Tam-Chang.
She has taught and done research at the University since 1994. As much as she enjoys doing research, only after a few minutes of conversation it becomes apparent that there is something more that keeps her interested in what she does.
“I usually can’t stay for more than an hour here,” she says, pointing to her office on the third floor of the Chemistry Building. There is a big-hearted incandescence to Tam-Chang’s words, a feeling that there are few strangers to this native of Hong Kong. She smiles. “After an hour or so I always feel that I need to working with my students, in the lab. I suppose I start to miss them, so I go to the lab and bother them quite a bit.”
Ken Hunter, a professor of microbiology and immunology and former vice president for research at the University, has been one of Tam-Chang’s mentors and colleagues during her time at the University.
He says that he isn’t surprised when he hears of her great love of teaching, or how Tam-Chang’s calm, reassuring presence in the lab has an almost therapeutic value to her students. Tam-Chang’s recent awards include the 2003 Alan Bible Teaching Excellence Award – given to the top teacher in the College of Science and the College of Liberal Arts. In addition, she was runner-up in 2004 for the F. Donald Tibbits University Distinguished Teacher Award.
“I have had the opportunity to work with several of Suk-Wah’s students,” Hunter says. “She treats her students with respect and they all have enormous regard for her. They know they’re receiving excellent training that will allow them to be successful in their future careers.
“I have tremendous admiration for Suk-Wah’s teaching abilities; teaching well requires a large commitment of time, and she has always been willing to put in the time even when it impacted her research activities. I know that she gets a lot of satisfaction from teaching.”
Tam-Chang sees her role to be more than simply furthering her students’ subject knowledge. In a way, she is like a hot-walker in thoroughbred racing, whose job is to sometimes ease and reassure a roiling mass of muscle. In her case, sometimes her best teaching occurs when she is able to calm the roiling mass of synapses firing hyperactively through the mind of a student whose grip on Chemistry might be tenuous at best.
“I always try to provide the broader perspective,” she says. “It’s not just always about Chemistry, or Biology, or Physics. That may be the field the student may want to go into, but it is more than that. It’s how you work that’s important. It’s how will you work with all these people in these companies or organizations, all from different backgrounds.
“Without interpersonal skills, no matter what field you plan on entering, you cannot survive in the real world.”
Hunter sees Tam-Chang’s career trajectory, both as a teacher and perhaps just as importantly, as a researcher, as a direct reflection of this philosophy.
“Although Suk-Wah is classically trained in organic chemistry, she is not limited by her disciplinary training,” he says. “She believes, as I do, that some of the most important scientific discoveries will come at the interface among disciplines.”
Teamwork, particularly in Tam-Chang’s current field of interest of biosensors, has been essential to success.
Over the past several years, she has worked with Hunter and Nelson Publicover, professor and chair of the Department of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering, in the fertile interdisciplinary field of biosensors, which are broadly defined as devices that use biological molecules as the sensing elements.
The partnership is based on each person’s strength: Hunter has expertise in the molecular biology of the biological molecules; Tam-Chang has expertise in the chemical attachment of these molecules to a sensor surface; Publicover has engineering expertise to design a physical detector system.
The sum of the parts has already been substantial: they’ve already designed a biosensor system for rapid detection of DNA and RNA for a variety of molecular diagnostic indications. A patent application has been submitted for the system.
Tam-Chang has also found a statewide application for the field, leading a National Science Foundation EPSCoR program from 2005-2006 to train Nevada students in using sensors to determine environmental and medical information such as mercury levels in the environment and RNA in cells.
“It’s really exciting to let the students know that the science in their classroom has real-world applications,” Tam-Chang says, who is also actively pursuing research in the Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) field. By understanding the synthesis and studies of liquid-crystalline compounds that exhibit dichroic properties (that is, direction-dependent absorption of light) and fluorescence emissions at long wavelengths, Tam-Chang is building the knowledge that will help research institutions and other companies prepare more materials that can show these direction-dependent optical properties.
“We’re fascinated with this,” she says. “I can spend hours looking into my microscope at this, looking at the material that changes color with the direction of the lights. It’s all so beautiful and fascinating to me.”
Hunter says Tam-Chang’s ability to feel strongly about her work – and to pass that excitement to her students – has been readily apparent almost from the day she joined Nevada’s faculty.
“I was Vice President for Research when Suk-Wah was hired and I worked with the chemistry department on her start-up package,” he remembers. “Her resume was simply outstanding, having worked with Francois Diederich at UCLA (noted for his multi-dimensional approach to molecular recognition in both Chemistry and Biology) for her doctorate and George Whitesides at Harvard (a pioneering researcher in soft lithography to make nanostructures) as a post-doctoral fellow. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and I remember having no doubt that she would be successful.”
Tam-Chang, who tutored in college at the University of Hong Kong, says she has always wanted to teach. Coming from a family of five sisters and one brother, she was the first person in her family to attend college. Her father, who worked in Hong Kong hospital after not finishing high school because of his own family’s low socioeconomic status, still was very proficient in English and encouraged all of his children to strive for more.
“He always said, ‘No matter how hard it is financially, you need to finish school,” she says.
Her own life philosophy, whether it is with the half-dozen or so graduate students in her lab, or at home with her husband and two daughters, ages 16 and 7, could probably be taken from this statement.
“I had someone tell me once that you should never hesitate to move into an area that you don’t know, particularly if you are interested in finding out more about it,” she says. “If something isn’t exciting to me, then I usually don’t want to research on it. I usually know what it’s important to me, what I’m interested in, and I hope I’m able to pass that along to the people I work with.”
Adds Hunter: “Suk-Wah is a person who brings out the best in her colleagues and students.”
John Trent is senior editor in University Communications.
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