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When I think about my high school years, I remember my rock-climbing community, summers paddleboarding on the Tennessee River and hikes appreciating Chattanooga’s astounding biodiversity.
I also remember sitting in my favorite science classroom and learning that Chattanooga wasn’t always this beautiful: Chattanooga was once described as the dirtiest city in America, complete with air pollution so thick that people had to use headlights and windshield wipers to see the road. Effective policies based in science have made the city what we know today.
Recent federal actions have initiated an upheaval of the American scientific enterprise, disrupting research that serves as the foundation for how we treat and prevent disease, for example, by informing standards for clean air.
I want to share my perspectives on why we, as individuals and as part of the Chattanooga community, need science.
My science teacher has been a life-changing mentor, and he is why I chose to become a scientist. Now, as a PhD student, I research how the lung develops so I can dedicate my career to uncovering how environmental exposures like air pollution make us sick. My goal is to use this knowledge to develop better policies that protect our health.
My science teacher had a similar experience of being inspired by his own AP biology teacher. His teacher not only cultivated his love of science but also greatly shaped his teaching style and pedagogy. This led my teacher to graduate as a biology major and, a few years later, go back to school to become an educator.
Science educators are critical because they help people recognize the importance of science in their daily lives, such as:
1. Science helps us improve the human condition. We understand how the world works through science and can use that knowledge to improve human existence. People used to believe that infections were caused by an imbalance of the body’s humors, and infections were treated by bleeding out the “bad blood.” Science has given us a better path.
2. Science trains us to look at information and think about it critically. The skeptical mind that doubts a TikTok influencer’s dubious claim is good. Fact-checking and research are critical skills. Science can teach that.
3. Science gives us a method to check ourselves and our knowledge. The Scientific Peer Review process allows research to be analyzed and critiqued so that we have reliable information to guide our actions.
4. Science is cool. Science explains why stuff does what it does. Humans have an innate curiosity that causes us to seek and explore. Science can help us understand the “how” and some of the “why.” Science improves our understanding of the world and our place in it.
We need to continually ask “why, how, what if …” to attempt to find new and better ways to do things and evaluate the data to support those conclusions.
To do this, science needs support locally – from the high school classroom to the research laboratory, and everywhere in between.
Science begins in communities, whether by addressing local problems with community-based solutions, supporting young scientists in the classroom or exercising curiosity in our daily lives.
We all benefit from fostering our scientific knowledge and curiosity as individuals and as a society, so we can make Chattanooga and the world a healthier place.
Rose Albert, a PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She graduated from Notre Dame High School in 2018. Contact her at 18albertr@gmail.com.
This article was written as part of the McClintock Letters Initiative to honor Nobel Laureate Dr. Barbara McClintock.
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