Professor Rachel Watson’s room, with pictures and newspaper articles plastered to the door and memorabilia scattered on the walls, fosters a first reaction of absolute comfort.
Watson, professor for the Department of Chemistry and co-coach for the University’s cross-country ski team, was born in Ludville, Colorado, an old mining town that she referred to as the “mountain ghetto.”
Watson originally set out to become a medical researcher after the tragic event of losing a childhood friend to Leukemia when the boy was only six years old. However, the track to becoming a medical researcher was lost when she was an early graduate student.
“I had this strange thing happen, serendipitous in retrospect,” said Watson. “I was asked if I would teach chemistry for the Upward Bound students that are high school kids that come to campus in the summer. I was not happy about it, I didn’t want to do it, but I felt I needed this favor for the folks who were asking me and I fell in love.”
After teaching that first class, Watson fell in love with teaching. She immediately decided that teaching was the path she needed to take and did everything she could in order to be in the classroom.
“I will never forget the first day of class,” said Watson. “It was like head-over-heels, unbridaled passionate love for teaching and that has never stopped.”
She never expected that teaching would be the course she would take since she always considered herself to be a huge introvert. Watson said that if someone told her back then that she would thrive in a classroom filled with students, she would have never believed it.
Watson’s career at the University of Wyoming began in 2001 teaching general chemistry and microbiology labs. Eventually she began teaching multiple biochemistry courses, including clinical biochemistry, general biochemistry and RNA biochemistry, as well as biological chemistry for chemistry majors and microbiology, which Watson considers her baby. Watson taught microbiology consecutively for 34 semesters.
Watson also does a lot of in-person teaching as a coach, which includes nutrition as well as an interdisciplinary course which tackles finding possible solutions for real world problems.
Currently Watson is interested in educational research and is working with many interdisciplinary scholars across the U.S. and Canada to understand student self-assessment. Previous literature found students overestimate their abilities, but Watson and her colleagues provide a counter hypothesis that individuals and groups of people are adequate self-assessors.
Self-assessment is important, Watson said, because “it has everything to do with whether or not people follow their passions and think they can change the world.”
This research relates to Watson’s upcoming TED Talk on April 20 about rethinking motivation. Though seats are limited and her nerves are sky high, Watson said she is excited about presenting her work.
Watson is also involved with the Learning Actively Mentoring Program, which teaches college educators and students how to teach student-centered and active learning. On May 3, Watson and fellows that have been trained through the program will present at a public event about what they have done in their classes with what they have learned through the program.
Teaching consumes Watson’s life, along with her love of coaching the University’s cross-country ski team. She recently returned from coaching the U.S. team in Russia.
Rachel Watson’s kind and caring personality shines through whenever she speaks, and her love for teaching and coaching never fails to show.
“Put me in a classroom with students, whatever the subject matter is, I will find a way to connect with those students,” said Watson. “I truly think that is at the heart of teaching, building relationships.”
