Part I: Lobbying for Change • Dr. Martina Ramirez

(Professor of Biology and Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, Loyola Marymount University || CA USA)

(1/3) “I was one of those science-y kids. I had a telescope in my room, spiders as pets, a lot of plants. I knew I was going to do science, it was just a question of what kind. I’m an evolutionary biologist — I study genetic variation, conservation genetics, and the reproductive biology of spiders. I was a competitive public speaker in high school. Expository speaking, speeches to inform, that was my schtick for four years of high school — the whole business of taking complex ideas and bringing them to the public in an understandable way. The stuff I do now in the higher-ed world is just a different form of the same thing.

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I helped oversee the University of California Student Lobby when I was a graduate student — its staff managed bills, lobbied members of the legislature, the governor’s office. I never took an actual job in that world — I knew if I went into it in a serious way I probably wouldn’t finish my PhD. But I brought that kind of viewpoint to my work at universities. I’ve been a professor at LMU for 20 years. I went here as an undergraduate. I’d already worked at four different schools for eight years before coming to LMU. I’d seen a lot of innovative things going on at those other places — seminars, investigative lab courses for freshman biology majors. When I tried to float new ideas here it was to faculty, many of whom I’d had as a student, who had this attitude of if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. I had to wait to make progress. It was like moving a bill through Congress. Who you could lobby, who retired, what new people came on board. When I got the chance to take over the lab courses, I changed it up. I’m also the Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence — I’m responsible for faculty development. Faculty are like plants that need fertilizer, and I look at myself as a gardener. I’ve had an ethic of inclusion wherever I’ve gone — an interest in diversifying the academy, shedding light on marginalized populations. I approach this as someone who’s had that experience. I always let that color what I do.”