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Interview with Mike Beug

Recent and Current Areas of Interest

I am becoming more and more diverse in my interests. But fundamentally my work centers around the idea of learning how to live sustainably on the land. Helping people learn that they can be happier with less goods and more free time and using the earth with more care, rather than just using up the resources. It is funny that I am thinking about teaching people how to avoid chemical agriculture, when I started out as a chemist. My first job offer was in industry to help make more and better pesticides. I turned it down even then, before I was any kind of an environmentalist. In my very first program at Evergreen with Steve Herman "The Ecology and Chemistry of Pollution" ( a nine-quarter program) we looked at the effects of DDT and other toxins on the environments. My fight against pesticides started then. But my introduction to ecological agriculture by Pat Labine was an even more important, because I learned how exciting and interesting it was to teach people new ways of farming and new ways of living that don't require the chemicals. Centrally I am an environmentalist, a pragmatic environmentalist. Sustainability is at the core of what I am interested in. This has led me to teach energy systems, ecological agriculture, and core programs that focus on the region.

While my main work is with the application of chemical understandings to these environmental issues, I have, and I think I show when I teach general chemistry, a tremendous excitement about the chemistry itself and what it allows you to do and understand. Because I see chemistry as the fundamental basis of all living systems, I can be very excited about chemistry when I teach in a program like FONS (Foundations of Natural Science) or INS (Introduction to Natural Science). Where I diverge from the typical chemist is that I don't look at chemistry as the solution to all things. But I do think chemistry is central to understanding biological systems. So it is a very important part of my teaching. My technical training comes into play when I do things like my soils classes in ecological agriculture. The understanding of chemistry has really been put inside the contexts of biology and the sustainability of biological systems.

I have a bit of the hunter gatherer in me and that has lead me into both fishing and more significantly, for my teaching, into mycology. I love to teach about mushrooms and have been fascinated with the beauty of mushrooms and have had many of my photos reproduced in books. Even here the sustainability issue has come up as we have come to recognize the importance of fungi in the forest ecosystems. The notion and theme of interconnections is something that really is important theoretically and practically.

Are there particular authors/artists/thinkers whose work you interested and which you often ask students to examine?

This clearly depends on what I am doing with students. If I am doing ecological agriculture for example there is no way I would teach it without reading Goodwyn, The Populist Moment, but there are really a number of books which are critical for understanding the American Psyche. I include in that list Cronon, Changes in the Land, Wooster, The Dust Bowl, Angus Wright, The Death of Ramon Gonzales: The Modern Agricultural Dilemma and Marty Strange, Family Farming. There are some good technical books, some nice stuff on Permaculture, and Wes Jackson and the work from the Land Institute are really interesting.

When people want to work with the chemical side of environmental issues, I hope people have had a year of general chemistry and a two quarters of organic to go with it, but there isn't a specific text of body of material I require.

Are there specific areas of interest or issues you want to work with students on in the current year?

Somebody who has a serious agricultural project, but I am really looking for someone who has done both some political economy and some ecology work. I don't take many contracts. I limit it to advanced students who are really ready to do the work. I do like internships with organizations like the EPA, Soil Conservation service and non-governmental organizations. If I find someone who is serious about mushrooms and is an advanced student, not a beginner, I can usually find a way for them to do some work.
Specific Skills, Competence, Techniques:

The skills I teach overlap with all of the material I have been talking about. The one other thing that is really important is writing. There is writing associated with any project I teach. The development of writing skills is critical for students. I am primarily oriented toward library research skills and writing, although in some programs like Eco-Ag we work on review articles, analytical research paper, and essay writing. I am much better at the first two.

In programs I teach lots of laboratory techniques. I do a lot with teaching how to test a proposition, designing experiments to create enough data to test a hypotheses. I teach students how to test an idea. I am oriented toward getting students to ask questions, and how to design something that will give them answers. One of the big skills is knowing when you have an answer and knowing when you have garbage. As I get further into the biological kinds of questions the relevance of statistics becomes greater. This is quite different than the kind of hypothesis testing that occurred when I was doing mainstream chemistry, where the outcomes were much more definite.

What are key qualities you look for in student work? What techniques you use to assess their work? How do you help students assess their work?

I tend to be working with students on a number of different levels with a number of different goals. In the lab or the field I want to know if they are present, on time, focused, paying attention, and taking good notes detailing their observations in a neat reproducible fashion. I want to know that anyone who looks at their notes can understand what they have done. My fundamental message in lab is that someone has to be able to pick up your lab notebook and repeat what you have done without talking to you about it. I want students to develop a sense of comfort and familiarity in the lab, but still remain focused. You can't be sloppy, because a lot of what we work with is hazardous and you could kill yourself or your partner if you are not careful. In the science I am looking for the grasp of the technical details and the mathematics that is involved behind the ideas. I think math and developing math skills becomes one of the most important aspects of that science. I really want to present problems that help students move beyond the structured text book situation and to confront problems that might come at them in the real world. I want to know if they have learned to think. I am not interested in seeing some one simply parrot back the book and repeat a technical solution that they have seen. But I want them to take technical ideas and apply those ideas to real life situations. I assess their work on the extent to which students can make this knowledge really illuminate problems and issues in the real world. Lots of students don't get that far and with them I have different expectations. I don't really expect all students to come to the same level. I have complex record keeping and it is possible that really bright students can get a quite negative evaluation if they are wasting their time and not going a long way. Conversely I can give a weaker student quite a good evaluation. I am very concerned with effort. I want everyone working hard, ideally harder than I am. In the writing I look for clarity and building skills at expressing themselves orally in seminars and presentations.

I really hate to do assessment. But I like to focus my energy on one on one talking with students. I spend a lot of time on campus and my door is always open.

Teaching Style:
How would you characterize yourself as a teacher?

A lot of people are taking what I am teaching because they feel they have to. At Evergreen we tend not to have requirements, but at the same time students are most frequently coming to me because they need to learn chemistry and almost always they don't really want to learn it, they just need it to do what they are doing. My interest is showing students what is exciting about it. I want them to see all the things you can do and understand better with just a little understanding of chemistry. So I have a lot of enthusiasm for the material that comes out when I talk about it. I am trying to teach the science and the scientific method in an applied manner so that people can apply it to real life.

I see myself as being a very accessible teacher. I try to provide significant challenge to students at all levels. So I ask extra work of students who learn things faster. I do have high expectations. Students who don't do the home work, don't do the lab, come late to seminar and so forth are in trouble with me. I expect student to be there and be prepared, so in that sense I am a strict sort of teacher. I have heard students in Eco Ag refer to Pat and me as "Mom and Dad." Parents serve many roles. And I do get pretty attached to students and want to help guide them. I see my role extending beyond the material I am teaching. I don't mean by this that I see my primary job as an adviser, the content is really important, but that both the content at student's development are important to me.

Building community is a part of what I try to do in my programs. I do things like potluck lunch in many of my programs. And I want to emphasis the need for interdependence and engagement in my work.

Seminars are my biggest challenge. Occasionally we have great ones, but how to get them consistently good and challenging has been a real issue.

What types of students tend to do well with you?

Student who try, both really bright students and students who have struggled tend to do well. I think that is one of the really big changes in my teaching over the years. It used to be only the really bright students who did well, but I have been learning how to work with and bring out the shyer students and students who haven't succeeded academically before. At every level I am trying to get them to work hard and move ahead of where they started. In my exams, and I give a lot of them, I build in three different level of questions.

What types of students have a hard time with you?

I can be pretty curt and pretty short if you're late for class, you haven't done the work. I haven't got time for you. I've got too much work to do, too many students.
What do your student evaluations say about the way you come across to students?

Most of my evaluations are very positive. In the last few years the evaluations tend to say that the experience has been among the most important they have had. They have gotten a lot out of the program. Learned a lot more than they thought they would, discovered that chemistry is interesting and they want to do more with it. When their is criticism, it tends to be a third saying I say too much in seminar, a third saying I do just the right amount, and the last group saying I don't say enough. I get lots of positive comments on my availability.

Expectations about Contracts, Internships, and Evaluations
What qualities do you look for in a student who comes to you for work in a contract?

I am looking for a student who has an idea and wants to learn something that is a true individual contract. I don't take students who are coming to me to take a course, but if it is a real project with a real question, that is what I am looking for. With internships, the question is slightly different. I want to know if they are ready to do an internship or would they be better off in a program. Are there still some skills they need to be getting before they go off and do the internship.
What information do you want to see when a person comes to look for a contract?

I want to know what have you already done. Who have you worked with. Because I want to ascertain whether they have done enough of the basic work so that it makes sense for them to be asking these questions and that they have a reasonable chance of getting meaningful answers.

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Last Updated: March 15, 2007