A Molecular Powerhouse and Trailblazer: Leslie Gregg-Jolly Enters Senior Faculty Status
After 29 years teaching in the Grinnell biology department, Professor Leslie Gregg-Jolly is preparing to enter senior faculty status.
A lifelong liberal arts learner, Gregg-Jolly attended Vassar College as an undergraduate interested in statistics, math, and the sciences. She remembers being intimidated by the competitive nature of the large pre-medical cohort that dominated the sciences there, but it was at Vassar that a professor invited Gregg-Jolly to assist him with cell transport research at the biology labs in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This experience, she says, was life-changing.
At Woods Hole, Gregg-Jolly, a self-proclaimed “people person,” was working in the lab with diverse scientists, engrossed in engaging conversations with them about their lives and research. “Before that point, my impression of science had been a white man in a lab coat looking through a microscope by himself all day,” she recalls. So transformative was this research experience that Gregg-Jolly decided to apply to graduate schools in her senior year. After applying to only three schools (which she does not recommend that her students do!) she was accepted into the biology graduate program at Yale University, close to her home in New York.
While at Yale, Professor Gregg-Jolly conducted her thesis research in the lab of Nick Ornston, studying cloning in bacterial models. (Her eighth-floor laboratory happened to be right next to the lab of Sid Altman, who won the 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Tom Cech ’70 for their discovery that RNA can also act as an enzyme.) Ornston was a notoriously tough principle investigator, and graduate school was arduous, but Gregg-Jolly fell in love with her research and her model systems: “Bacteria grow overnight! I didn’t have to worry about killing them!”
After a few years spent completing a post-doc at the University of Arizona, Gregg-Jolly cast a far net in her job search, applying to positions both in the pharmaceutical industry and in teaching. She received an offer to teach biology at Grinnell, and she has been here ever since.
At the time Professor Gregg-Jolly began teaching at Grinnell, the Grinnell Science Project (GSP) was in its infancy. The founders of GSP had looked at the academic performance of students who said they were interested in majoring in science but who didn’t declare. Nothing about their performance indicated they weren’t capable of success in the sciences. Something in the environment wasn’t welcoming, and the Grinnell Science Division changed its approach. Gregg-Jolly dedicated herself to the development of active pedagogy with her colleagues in the biology and chemistry departments — ensuring students engaged with the research process from the very beginning of BIO-150 and developing lab curriculums with real-world applications. “I myself almost didn’t pursue science at all, because of my fundamental misunderstanding of what a scientist was,” Gregg-Jolly remembers. She wants to ensure that future students don’t have the same misunderstanding.
Since GSP’s inception in 1992, Grinnell has seen massive changes in student success. A far greater percentage of students that come to Grinnell wanting to major in the sciences now end up declaring those majors. With Professor Jim Swartz, Professor Gregg-Jolly co-authored a grant that resulted in GSP’s 2011 receipt of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring.
She has worn many hats in her time at Grinnell, not only teaching and mentoring but serving as the College’s chief diversity officer, associate dean of the College and as chair of the biology and biological chemistry majors. When she had her first child, she was the first faculty member in all of Grinnell’s biology, chemistry, and physics departments to have a baby while on the tenure track.
Professor Gregg-Jolly looks back on her younger self and recalls her time at Yale — how few women faculty members there were, even fewer with families. As she moves into this next stage of her career, she reflects on what she wishes she’d known then. “I wish I could tell myself that it’s going to be ok. That you’re going to make it. And … to be brave.”
We Want to Learn From You
Leslie Gregg-Jolly is developing a new course titled People in Biology. This course will examine the sociopolitical context of biology research, and will cover topics such as funding sources, institutions, regulation, and who does (or doesn’t get to) do science. The course will contain a career-planning element, so biology alumni are encouraged to email Gregg-Jolly letting her know what you are doing, how you got there, and if you would like to contribute to the course sometime (for example, as as a guest panelist). Even if she didn’t have the pleasure of knowing you at Grinnell, she would love to hear from you!