Farmington Faculty


Mary Schwanke, Ph.D.

Professor - Biology

Ph.D., University of Rhode Island
M.S., University of Rhode Island
B.S., Slippery Rock State College

In the Lab: Engaging Students — Setting High Academic Expectations
Mary believes that having a laboratory sets the pace and tone of the entire course and the science labs are the most important part of the course. Because of this, the connection between the lecture and the lab is critical.

Mary's Biology labs are tailored to meet the class interest, and progress, on a continuum. Her students often work independently and the labs are specifically designed to give students a feeling of being a true scientist. Mary's students are not just given activities to perform, they are given assignments that help to illustrate the concepts discussed in the lecture — training her students to be thinking, questioning, real scientists, even those who are not Biology majors or other natural science majors.

To learn the skills and techniques actual scientists learn Mary also requires her students to set up their own lab equipment. This may seem like a simple notion, but by having her students do this she pushes the students to think about what equipment they will need — and why.

It also helps students become much more comfortable with laboratory equipment. The result is that her students become confident, capable and comfortable in lab settings.

This concept is also important because not all of Mary's students are Biology majors. Many of them are teaching majors and will need to be comfortable and capable setting up labs in their future classroom settings. Helping these students to become comfortable and capable in setting up labs is vital to their school classroom settings.

In the Classroom: Putting the Lab Experience Into a Broader Context
In the classroom, Mary Schwanke pushes students to actively grasp information, to get them to be engaged learners rather than just listen to her talk and spit back what they heard in a lecture. She looks to see what her students already know — either from science classes they took in high school or other science classes they took at Farmington and build upon that framework of knowledge, something called "concept mapping." In doing this, Mary feels students see commonalities between what they have already studied and new concepts and ideas.

Her Biology classes shift from the traditional lecture hall to smaller lab settings where students work in even smaller teams to explore and present new concepts.

Mary frequently incorporates multimedia images and video clips into her Biology lectures and presentations. She also uses "the questioning model" to encourage her students to not only become engaged listeners, but engaged questioners — which is the essence of being a scientist: one who questions.

In presenting scientific facts, Mary shows how the facts were discovered and what led to the discoveries — showing students that science is a process and that facts are built upon facts, which are built upon facts.

She also demonstrates to students just how much the science community still doesn't know. Mary does this because she realizes some of her students will go on to become researchers and that they should remember there is still a vast world on unknown puzzles in the world of science, even today.


Outside the Classroom: Innovation and Excitement — Putting Theory into Practice
Mary requires her Biology students to actively present their work — both in writing and orally. She also encourages them to prepare some assignments in their own words and in their own formats, rather than in formats that resemble the scientific writing they may find in textbooks, for instance writing a letter to a family member, developing a classroom lesson plan, creating a children's story, writing a poem or performing a song on key topics of the lesson.

Indeed, she wants students to write for themselves, rather than for the professor. She believes this method helps students figure out quickly where they're fuzzy on the material and it forces them to think more deeply about the material.

Mary has her students work in pairs in the labs and she asks them to do real presentations, early and often, so students become comfortable presenting their findings in front of people.

Mary feels so much of science — be it in an elementary school classroom, in a high school classroom, in graduate school, or in a research setting — is about not only doing and understanding the research but in communicating the information to others. Because of this, she teaches her students to present and communicate their findings throughout their Biology classes.


A True Academic — Areas of Special Interest
Mary Schwanke is very involved in biomedical research. This keen interest in this area helps her students understand there is still a great deal the science and medical communities do not know and that exploring the unknown is at the very heart of science. In fact, her last two sabbaticals involved collaborating with the University of New England on the effects of diabetes on the heart.

Mary is also heavily involved in improving the teaching of mathematics and science in Maine schools. She has been part of a small group in Maine to receive a National Science Foundation grant to improve math and science teaching in Maine.

The project prompted Mary to think of ways to model good teaching techniques in her classrooms and labs and to demonstrate those cutting-edge teaching methods to those students of hers who will become science teachers: new teaching methods and new science methods being integrated.

She has found that for education majors, particularly those with a science concentration, this is a strong benefit and these students often can incorporate the scientific research model to their non-science classes, as well.


Respected in the Field — Noteworthy Accomplishments
Mary was instrumental in the University of Maine at Farmington receiving a prestigious $4 million National Science Foundation grant (along with UMaine and USM) to improve teaching mathematics and science.

In addition, Mary's work is published in a number of scientific journals, including a recent article she co-published, “Impaired SERCA function contributes to cardiomyocyte dysfunction in insulin resistant rats,” which appeared recently in the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology, which is published for the International Society for Heart Research.


Outside of Academia — Personal Interests and Activities
Outside of her busy academic life, Mary loves to cross-country ski, mostly early in the mornings on the trails in and around her home in neighboring Wilton, Maine. In the summertime, she enjoys sailing the Saco River and the coast of Maine on her 30-foot Mystic sailboat.

Mary also enjoys traveling: France, Scandinavia, Belgium, and Germany, as well as Australia, and the Bahamas.

She is also an avid painter, focusing on landscapes in both watercolors and oils.

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