UAB STEM education is flowering with new leadership and programs

Photos by Nik Layman

The College of Arts and Sciences welcomed several new chairs last summer, including leadership for three of our popular and competitive science departments: Dr. Richard Dluhy in Chemistry, Dr. Ilias Perakis in Physics, and Dr. Yuliang Zheng in Computer Science. Each came from a different academic and professional background, but all three have deep experience and are ready to grow their programs. Alongside Dr. Steve Austad, chair of the Department of Biology (whom we interviewed in Arts & Sciences magazine in the Fall 2014 issue), these three chairs see the potential for UAB’s science majors to grow significantly in the coming years.

Dr. Yuliang Zheng, Dr. Richard Dluhy and Dr. Ilias PerakisJulie Keith: Tell me about your respective departments and about your vision for growing them.

Ilias Perakis: Physics is a discipline that’s at a transition point—it’s trying to redefine itself. Here at UAB we don’t do nuclear physics, high-energy particles, or big-bang theory. Our work is on the edge of engineering; we also do a lot of computation for research purposes. We are high on having our majors going into teaching careers, which is close to my heart. We also want to graduate students for medical school, business school, law school. Regardless of their plans, we can provide a lot to them here in a top research university with high-quality researchers.

At the same time in the College of Arts and Sciences we have a liberal arts environment where students get direct advising from the chair and from faculty, as well as from professional advisors. So the combination of a research-intensive university with a liberal arts approach that’s also affordable, that’s very appealing. Right now we have about 50 majors, but our goal is to double our number of majors in the next three years.

Richard Dluhy: Chemistry has a much bigger undergraduate footprint: We have about 314 majors. What has impressed me since I’ve been here at UAB is the absolute quality of some of our undergraduates. Some of the kids are as good as kids I’ve seen anywhere in the country in 25 years in academics. These are kids who come in and they know exactly what they want, what it is they want to do, and they are focused. A lot of them want biomedical degrees, and we’re more than happy to teach them chemical and biochemical sciences. In fact, of the kids who do want to go to medical and professional schools, we have about 90 percent placement. But it’s not just that, we’re also doing work in material science, drug discovery, and biophysical aspects.

I would add to what Ilias said. To me the neat thing about UAB is the interdisciplinary nature of the faculty we have and the opportunities we have for students. And it’s not just biomedical in nature. Just sitting around this table here, we have physics and computer science and chemistry and those integrate very well. Take computational chemistry for example. You have students who may be interested in doing a laboratory science and then computation as a minor or an addition to a bench-type science. There’s also a biophysics commonality in the physics and chemistry departments.

I would say the department is medium-sized but is likely to grow in the next several years as we take on new faculty and expand the research directions of the department.

Yuliang Zheng: The department of Computer and Information Sciences has historically been very strong in traditional areas like high performance computing. Now we are rapidly moving to areas of new importance like cybersecurity, big data, the internet of things, and of course our biomedical applications. And we have a wide spectrum of academic programs: We’ve had the B.S. in computer science but now we have the B.A. With that degree you can take all of the relevant computer sciences courses and still have a minor in chemistry, physics or other subjects. I like to say it’s a T-shape: you have a broad exposure to a lot of subjects, but a deep understanding of computer science.

Right now we have close to 300 majors and my goal would be to get that up to 500. I’d also like to grow our graduate program. Right now we have about 50 masters and Ph.D. students, but I’d like to get that closer to 80-100.

Like Rich and Ilias, I’m excited about the collaborative environment we have not only in CAS but across the whole campus. Our department also has plans to collaborate with other schools and groups on campus.

JK: Dr. Dluhy, you mentioned the strength of some of your Chemistry students. What do you all think about science education generally? Are our students being properly prepared in middle and high school to study science at the university level?

RD: What I’ve seen so far is that the top students in Alabama can be competitive with the top students at any college in the country. Those students understand the opportunities; they don’t need to be convinced of the advantages of a STEM degree.

The challenge for STEM education in the middle and high schools is to broaden the exposure for all students and show them that there are lots of opportunities in STEM. It’s not just in traditional areas like chemistry, physics, computer science, or biology, but all the departments in the College have many different opportunities for doing interesting interdisciplinary studies of value to employers. Even if you don’t want to go to graduate school or medical school, a B.S. degree in a science field from UAB puts you into a position where you can do anything you want.

JK: Like what?

YZ: A few days ago, I dug up a spreadsheet that shows the return on investment in college majors. What is fascinating is that of the top 10, pretty much all of them are STEM, including all of us here at the table. So I think the message should be pushed strongly to potential students: major in STEM because it’s actually the best investment you can make for your whole life.

RD: Irrespective of the individual major, employers are looking for critical thinking skills. What you get with a STEM major is some technical knowledge but also an appreciation for how to think critically.

IP: The other thing to consider here is that now society is facing “grand challenge” problems. The easy problems have been solved; the ones that are still outstanding go beyond traditional disciplines in terms of their difficulty and the requirements it will take to solve them. You need more students with critical thinking skills, more students with a lot of hands-on practice in the labs with their hands, and students who have a broad background that goes beyond traditional disciplines. The skills and knowledge in our high-tech society need to be at a higher level than it was before. Our departments will provide that knowledge and that support.

In physics, we are a non-traditional department that matches the UAB culture of always trying to do something new. That’s a strongpoint of this university.

JK: What about UABTeach? That’s an important new tool we have for improving STEM education at the K-12 level. 

RD: UABTeach is going to be a really good thing.

IP: Educating physics teachers is close to my heart; it’s something that I did in Greece, where training teachers was a priority. Alabama doesn’t have a lot of physics teachers. UABTeach provides that support in the high schools and it’s done very professionally.

YZ: I agree. A grassroots approach to building the next generation of students is very important.

JK: How do you broaden the appeal of your majors? How do you convince a high school student to study something if they’ve never taken a class in that subject before?

RD: In chemistry we also have a program called Chemistry Scholars where we bring in some of the top kids from high schools every year, about 12 or so, and what we’ve found is that they’re the best ambassadors for chemistry education at UAB. They go back to their communities and tell them about the opportunities that are here. I think that that is maybe the best way of telling people in Alabama communities about the opportunities when they see these kids succeed and go on to jobs, medical school graduate school whatever it may be. They get the sense that this is valuable and can lead to success.

YZ: I mentioned the importance of a grassroots approach, but a top-down approach is also important, like the national initiative to grow more STEM teachers. Local businesses also have a role to play. Coming from Charlotte, North Carolina, one thing they’ve done well is attracting business to the area, and the enrollment at UNC Charlotte has risen as a result. Those companies need to know there’s a strong workforce in the area to fill their jobs.

RD: If you have a talented workforce, or at least where the companies know they can recruit a talented workforce, they will come and local school issues will take care of themselves.

IP: We want UAB students to be getting all these high paying jobs. I came from Vanderbilt, and it’s called the “Harvard of the South.” Why can’t we be the same, but at a much lower price? When someone thinks about Birmingham they should also think about UAB. UAB is the key to making this progress happen.



JK: What about girls and young women? What are the barriers that keep them from continuing on in STEM fields?

YZ: I recently read a news article talking about programming skills, and according to that piece, girls actually do better job at programming than boys. If you think about it, it’s maybe not surprising. At the national level, there is the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing that works to attract girls to computer science. Within our department, we have the Girls Who Code program with Dr. John Johnstone. It’s really about reaching individual girls in their schools.  We had one of our senior students, a young woman, do a PYTHON class for local girls here last summer where they came to campus for 8-10 weeks.

RD: I think it really comes down to role models. When the three of us were in college, our role models were middle-age guys who looked like us. I don’t think you can underestimate the importance of female or Black or Latino or other minority faculty. Students can point to them and say, “She did it, I can do it, too.” That’s really the core issue of diversity and having a faculty that looks like our students.

IP: As a parent of two daughters, I can speak to this. One daughter is a [university] freshman and the other is a dancer. And they were able to develop their skills because of the supportive environment around them, where people helped them understand what the opportunities were. We’re trying to do that at the departmental level. I would agree with Rich on role models. At my daughter’s school, there are student organizations that focus on mentoring the next group of women to enter the field. We need to make sure girls at UAB have these same kinds of support programs and activities on campus.

But no matter who the students are, we know they will benefit from this research environment.