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What you’ll hear in this episode:

• Why teachers are employing new methods of teaching to develop students’ critical thinking skills
• Why failure is a good thing, and the importance of learning how to fail
• How and why ACC and the Bioscience Incubator are prioritizing experiential learning in their curriculum

Thanks to modern technology, we have an unprecedented amount of information available to us at any moment, quite literally at our fingertips. What used to be privileged information only available in an educational setting such as a classroom is now accessible to everyone through the combination of smartphones and the Internet.

Samantha Croft has been a Biology professor for 11 years at ACC, and more recently joined the Faculty Senate as part of ACC’s “Teaching and Learning Academy,” a program designed to develop teachers and train them in “research and data-based high-impact practices.” Sam and ACC Bioscience Incubator Director Nancy Lyon explain that advanced technology and our modern information-saturated world has changed the craft of teaching. 

Rather than focus on teaching data, Sam explains teachers have to teach critical thinking, discernment, and source-checking techniques. ACC also emphasizes hands-on learning experiences in professional environments, fostering confidence and “preparing our students to go into the workforce in the current world effectively.” Beyond garnering confidence, the experiential teaching methods employed at ACC expose students to failure – how it feels, how to react to it, and most importantly in Sam and Nancy’s view, that it’s a good thing. 

“A huge movement at ACC right now is the concept of evaluation as a growth and learning tool,” Sam explains, reframing tests and other performance evaluators for students and teachers as opportunities for improvement rather than something that needs to be perfect. Host Dan Dillard, Sam, and Nancy agree that in business and in education, as a student, small business owner, or teacher, it’s important to understand that failure is a good thing, not only because it helps us improve, but also because it teaches resilience. 

Resilience and the ability to adapt is a life skill that everyone will need at some point. “People are more resilient than they give themselves credit for,” Nancy observes, explaining that everyone will have to adapt to the rapidly changing world, to a personal event, or to an experience of failure professionally, personally, or otherwise. Often, these moments that require someone to adapt are the same moments that present a new job opportunity or career path, and Sam agrees that trusting your ability to adapt to an unknown situation is the precursor for growth, explaining that success in her view is  “about stepping out and being willing to fail.”

Listen to the full episode to learn more about the academic side of ACC’s Bioscience Incubator, the exciting cooperation between students and companies using their labs, and how the professors at ACC are adapting their teaching to prepare students for our ever-changing world. 

If you liked the episode, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share it with a friend!

Science In the Mall, Y’all is a founding_media podcast created in partnership with the ACC Bioscience Incubator.

Host: Dan Dillard, founding_media

Guests: Nancy Lyon, ACC Bioscience Incubator Director

Samantha Croft, ACC Biology Professor and President-Elect Faculty Senate

Transcript:

You know, I really enjoyed the learning aspect of all the guests that we’ve had on the show. And it’s, it’s been amazing just taking a peek into the different lives of what the individuals are doing with all the work over at ACC and bio science lab. Now it’s at bio-science so that correct, not bio sciences, bio sciences, bio science incubator.

Perfect. So I really enjoyed getting to know more about the bio science incubator and all the people there. One thing that I thought was amazing, and what we wanted to chat about today is, is this thing about learning and how we learn. And , um, how we’ve learned for years, how the systems have been built and then how that needs to have some disruption and, and, and make it more, more efficient is as we chatted one of my. Things that I just am passionate about is efficiencies, making things more efficient, much easier. Like when I look at problems, like why does this still exist? Why are we dealing with this? Aren’t we smarter than this? And the same thing happens like, uh, in education. One of the reasons that I started, you know, the magazine founding Austin is because I wanted to show a different path that people will take their own path and, and find their own way and make it as efficient and get, get where they want to go.

And it doesn’t have to be the traditional. I’ve got to do all these steps. We’ve seen in the past. So with that , um, Sam, welcome to the show, Nancy, welcome to the show, Sam or Samantha, you go by either or? I mean, all along we’ve been doing, you know, all these companies at the incubator and when we started, you had me and Marcia on here, and Marsha was one of the first students that we ever hired. And she talked a bit about like, Oh, how awesome it was to work at the incubator and get all this hands on thing. And then we kind of cut away from that, went straight to companies and we’ve been focusing on these companies and it’s, it deserves another take, you know, like that is a huge part. We’re here, the bioscience incubator is part of ACC, I work for ACC. Right. And why are they renting lab space to companies? Right. Because they know that it will increase. Workforce, you know, our training and, and, you know, increase workforce. Isn’t the right word. But I think, you know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. Um, And so in talking to Samantha. She’s doing that from the academic side. I am totally removed from the academic side.

I don’t even know anything about ACC and the academic side, but it turns out we’re doing the same thing from two different angles. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and what struck me is, as we started chatting about this episode and the things that , um, Regarding education and how we can make that more efficient and the work that Samantha’s doing and through ACC, the bio-sciences incubator as well is just how many similarities there are between me as an employer, because I’ve had, have had many employees throughout my careers and businesses and the, their preparedness to, to work and what the challenges are there. And so, you know, uh, it, it is definitely a subject that I was like, wow, this is. We, we definitely need to address this. So Sam jump in. What is, what are the things that let’s, let’s just chat a little bit about you and what you do and, and let the audience, I know, I know a lot about what you’ve done, but let’s just chat with the audience about your background and what your missions are.

Sure. Yeah. We are the, the front end of that employee, employer pipeline basically is, is what ACC does even more. So, I mean, that’s the mission of ACC is to get. Our students where they want to go. Um, whether most of that that’s to a job. So I , um, am a professor in the biology department. Uh, that’s my in my home. And , uh, have been teaching ACC 10, almost 11 years now. Um, but I also am involved in a lot of the administrative stuff , um, faculty, Senate, that kind of thing. And , um, some of the teacher professional development, you know, training the teachers on the high-impact practices of teaching, basically. So we can get as efficient, one of your favorite words, or you can get as efficient with our teaching, you know, so we’re not just spinning our wheels, but we’re really doing. Strategic and well thought out things in the classroom. Um, and who comes up with that? That was that stuff that you designed or the college designed or how does that? Yeah, so we had the program that I’m referring to is called the teaching and learning Academy and we hired out , um, it ended up being 25 different faculty that were specialists in different things and they created.

These modules. So each one of them has a developer of that particular module and they’re all, you know, database research based high-impact practices. So it was the tagline is it was designed by faculty for faculty. Really cool. What are some of the benefits that you’re seeing or what are the, some of the changes you want to see?

Um, well, for, for that, in that program in particular, it. So much, it kind of goes back to the point of what we were talking about. So much of academia has been, what’s been handed down from your forefathers, you know, can you tell me like we’re most of us in , um, in higher education are subject matter experts. You know, I was in the lab for years. I was not in the classroom being taught how to teach. And so you walk in as an expert in your field and you’re doing a skill that has no background. So, um, what we end up doing is mimicking what we saw, because you know, that’s what we know. Um, and unless you specifically go out and hunt different things, you’re just gonna do what you know, and that’s lovely.

To a degree, but our world has changed. They, they techniques of, you know, the sage on the stage where you’ve got the guy standing there, lecturing that was highly effective back when information was an elite rare thing. And your job was to deliver information. Well, that’s not the world anymore. Anyone can Google anything. So the role of the educator needs to change. It’s me telling you a fact, you know, I mean, half the time my students will pull out. If they find something interesting, they pull out their phone and start Googling it and go, did you know, did you know? Cause there, you know, why a wrong teacher we’ll end it in.

Students will do that too. You gotta be careful. Um, but information is no longer a privilege. So what the educator needs to do is so different than it was. I mean, God pre-Google, that was not that long ago, you know? Um, so that’s what, that’s what, that’s what our passion is, is to get these teachers who have been living in this kind of antiquated world , um, to change their approach so that we’re, we are preparing our students to go into that workforce. In the current world effectively. Yeah. That makes, yeah, that makes a ton of sense. One of the things that, I mean, as you were talking, reminds me of my daughter, she’s 18, she’s about to be 18 and, and yeah, it’s always, she’s always on the phone. She’s always fact checking me. It’s one of the things that you don’t realize that the world is changing in front of you.

I was sharing a story with you guys the other day about , um, I realized this Oh, about. Eight nine years ago. I back back in the day, we will ask you, you know, about something you give your best guess. Here is based on my experience, here’s the answer. And so I grew up delivering that kind of language, that those kinds of answers, and then Google that for me, because at one point, you know, it’s like this BS, meter’s like, Nope, that’s not what Google says, you’ve got it wrong.

And then all of a sudden I found myself. Oh, now there is this information available, which, which there wasn’t before, as you pointed out and it’s at your fingertips, and now I can just, as easily you look up at a factual answer, a more factual answer than what my best guess would have been. So I just, but that was a wake up point for me about eight years ago when I was being called out, as I’m sure happens in the classroom all the time. And then you start. Being more careful about how you deliver your answers and understand what those questions really mean, which is, which is really cool. So is that, you know, when you say you have to figure out a way to deliver information when they already have it, is that the hands-on thing or is there really more of it?

Helping people understand how to make, you know, decide what information that they’re finding is accurate or, you know, what, what does that even look like? Because I like the  lab side. Yeah, yeah, no, that’s there there’s both sides of it. So first of all, you’ve got to teach them , um, for, I don’t know, lack of a better word discernment. Right? You’ve got to teach them how to check the source that they’re getting. Uh, and so. And, and so that’s part of the, yeah, that’s going to be incredibly important because you pointed something out there that I hadn’t thought about. So we went from, okay, I’m going to check Google too. I’m going to check Google and sources because right now with. You know, I’m going to say the words, fake news and fake media and all this, because there is so much stuff out there that like, what do I believe? And what do I not believe Facebook is real. I mean, I think then that’s like the easy way to just parse that out. Right. That’s what I always say that the internet doesn’t lie. Of course. It’s yeah, no, that’s a huge thing. It used to be, you know, we would worry so much about like teaching people’s citations and you know how to properly say now it’s like, what are you citing? Is more way more important. You’re no longer going to the encyclopedia that has been, you know, verified.

Yeah. So that’s a huge part. I , um, I actually do a whole like lesson. I dedicate a day in my non-majors classes, so I’m like, you are going out in the world and your respective fields. You need to, to have this in your brain. And there are some really cool , um, Kind of trick websites out there that teachers have developed that look really official and that are, you know, totally ridiculous. When you do any kind of deep thought about it. Like one of them is banning water, but it uses the chemical name for a more chemical name for water. And so all of these students just are like, I get them to write an essay about whether they would ban this or not. And every time it gets a handful of them are like, dude, you’re banning water.

Oh, you got it. You got it. Yeah. Right. That’s funny something you pointed out, it’s really teaching and it’s teaching critical thinking teaching. How do you get the answer? Now? The information is available, but how do you get the right answer? Because you don’t have to memorize anymore and going back again, you know, being beat upon. Institutions were built. I mean, we, it was pre-information age, it was more industrial age. Here’s you do the same systematic way you get in, and here’s what factories want. And as you pointed out, there’s no longer there. So you didn’t have to teach as many critical things. And it was more, it was more memorization. It was more here’s the processes and here’s what you follow. And everybody in the square. And now it’s not that at all now. It’s okay. How do you find the right answers and how do you think outside the box and how do you get from point a to point B as efficiently, as possible as low cost and, and, and , um, as quick as possible.

So there’s a lot more to it. So part of it is the discernment. And then when you get into what Nancy was saying with the experiential part, you know, you can look up how to do something. But when you do it, it’s a different beast. You know, like to me, it, I was thinking, I was giggling about, you know, the, the world of Pinterest fails. Right. Like, I read how to make that. And then I made it and my cake doesn’t look anything like your cake. Well, there’s the experiential teaching aspect of it just because you have, you’ve watched somebody do it, you and that you can’t go out on the workforce and then be an expert in it because you read about it or you watched a YouTube video about it. There is definitely a. Uh, part of education needs to be applying this information and , um, in, in , um, in a mentored environment where they’re allowed to fail and there, you know, and in some ways set up to fail, like you really got to almost set them up to fail. Like you, you need to know what it feels like.

You need to learn how to deal with this mentally and emotionally, but also you need to learn how to troubleshoot and all of that. You don’t get from. Reading the, you know, the step-by-step description there, all these finesse things that come with, you can get that, like, you know, when you took lab classes, maybe I can only relate in the lab side of it, not English or whatever, but it’s so true.It’s like in every lab class that like UT and all these universities, they have this recipe, you know, protocol, whatever you want to call it. Right. And how many times does it not work, but you’re at a time and they’re like, okay, well this is what would have happened. All right. Let’s just go on. But if you really have to do that thing and there’s no, you can’t go on you don’t, it didn’t work. You can’t do the next step. If it didn’t work, you can’t frost the cake. If the cake is liquid. Right, right. And people don’t ever get that message because. They just moved on and they get out of school and I I’ve done it here where I had students that I was like, Oh, let’s play science. I mean, the students that we hired, the incubator emotionally are doing maintenance.

They’re just running the place and they totally run the whole place, but then they have downtime and I’m like, Hey, let’s do some cloning, you know, and they’ll set up a PCR reaction and it won’t work and they just don’t even know what to do with themselves. Cause it didn’t work. And instead of just repeating it, because it could have been that you just It didn’t work. Who cares? Right. Like, try it again. They’re like, yeah, but I have to do something different. I might maybe try it again and then we’ll figure that out. You know, like they just don’t understand that it doesn’t always work. The reality is it, does it all reality is it usually doesn’t work when you’re learning how to do it. Like there’s so much to it that expects you to fail me places for, for error. Yeah. Well, it takes me to thinking about you, the person that professional has been doing the same thing for the 20 years. There’s so many things that even if you had them too, Write a book. They’re going to write the book.

They’re going to give you the pain points. They’re going to skip the little, the little details. Oh, you shouldn’t touch this with your finger because this is what happens to the entire thing of employees. Right? So can’t put that many details in it. You know, you just have to do it and let someone watch. And that’s where we’re at. Sam was just saying mentored and that matters like you have to watch and go, Ooh, I didn’t say that, but you can’t touch the site. Right. Oh, I forgot to mention that. But, or brand of materials, if you get this brand, it works better than that brand, even though on the paper and in the pictures, they look the same. They’re really not like, how do you, yeah. How do you know that? And how do you write that and how the, yeah, I was like, sounds like what’s, what’s starting to happen. Here is more, you know, Back in the days, a lot of apprenticeships were really big, you know, journeymen and all that kind of stuff. And now it’s like if the college starts figuring out, how can we build that? You know, what was happened before, as far as apprenticeships and teaching, put them in there together and make that happen to have this hands-on. One of the things that I wanted to touch on that I heard you say is failed. And I think this, if we look at old school teaching everything’s pass, fail, pass.

Good.Fail bad. Pass good.Fail bad. And there’s this ingrained thought that society has to fail is bad, but you go talk to a bunch of entrepreneurs, talk to a bunch of people that have got there and fail and fail fast, fail on purpose and learn from it. And it’s actually a good thing. I was talking to a , um, and this is where I would love for the language to GGB is just the meaning of the language to change. Fatal is actually good. This is where you learn. You have school that you learned. Your basics. And then you get in the world and you fail and you continue failing the rest of your life. Every failure is education. Keep growing that. 

Yeah. Even in improv, I did improv for many years and the first thing they do in improv one Oh one is make you do a failure bow. So they give you this little thing, like, alright, pass the ball and say, you know, a word that begins with it, you know? And so it’s going really fast and you screw up and that. And, you know, it’s a big deal. Everyone stops and you stand in the middle of the room and you bow and they applaud uproariously to make you see, like that’s when the audience lacks is you screw up, like, that’s the goal right now. And so getting over what you just said, Dan, of like being totally caught up in the world. 

Well, if we, if we all knew what we were doing, then we wouldn’t need education. Like I say this constantly, like if you did it perfectly, then why are you here? You should be teaching the class. If you know how to do everything like you are learning. You know, I don’t understand that. And, and there’s a couple of points I want to make. One is , um, Just on this one thing, touch about word of failure. Again, I was interviewing a scientist from Austria and , uh, just fascinating when I said the word fail. He’s like, I don’t like that word. And I’m like, why? And he’s like, because in America it’s like fail fast, fail, early fail, you know, and just keep learning from it. And he’s like, I don’t like that word. We use the word test. Scientists use the word test. You, you Edison who failed at making the light bulb a thousand times. It’s not failure. He just tested 999 times, and then he got the right thing. And so just changing the, what that means was so significant for me, the way he looked at it, it was really cool, but that’s our society too.

You know, our society has this idea that, you know, You have to do everything perfectly, I guess, how people are raised, you know, how your parents handled failure and berated you, if you screwed up something versus people that had opened, do you see a different Sam in an age based on that, like, like older people taking failure more seriously and younger people and being like, yeah.

Um, yes and no. Yeah, the, the. Yeah. Being able to kind of let it roll off your back a little bit more. The younger generation is probably a little bit better about that, but you know, if you think about it, we go back to the information. If you’re memorizing facts, you you’re wrong, right? Like if the answer is five and you say four. Wrong like you failed. Right? Like, but, but when you’re doing critical thinking, when you’re doing these higher level applied things, there’s not usually such a black and white yes. Or no answer. Um, and so this concept, yeah. I always like to say let’s do an experiment. Let’s try it and see what happens.

You’re changing the vocabulary and that’s actually a huge movement right now at ACC is the concept of evaluation as a growth. And a learning tool. You you’re assessing your students. Um, that, that, you know, the concept of like a test and everybody is just like, Ooh, I wrong. I’m wrong. I didn’t get it. It’s like, no, no, no. I’m showing you where you can improve. This is growth. This is not judgment. It’s growth. And we’re actually going through that with all of the faculty right now, too, of like, when you get an evaluation, it’s this is where you can improve. You don’t want to get an evaluation. That’s all perfect. Because you’re there’s no, you’re not, you’re not getting any suggestions to get better.

So that’s like a huge thing. Um, right now under current and the college is shifting that concept of judgment versus growth points.  A couple of points that I want to make from a business side. So what I love about this conversation is it’s the amount of I’ve interviewed probably over 150 entrepreneurs. And so a lot of business discussion, of course, I run three or four businesses myself, and I’ve done this for a long time. So there’s a lot of aspects from a business owner perspective and employer perspective where these employees are coming to, that you. Um, want to make sure that message becomes really clear.

And so one of the things you said earlier was, you know, if you do everything perfect, you know, you’re here to learn. If you do everything perfect, you can’t learn. Well, the thing about it is even if you did everything perfect, the world moves so fast that businesses. The the whole life cycle of a business is you have the startup, you have the growth, you have the maturity, and then if you’re not changing and growing, you’re dying.

Look at blockbuster. You know, just as an example, I hear their stock’s doing well cycle of some of these businesses, no matter how big they get, if they can’t, if they’re not adapting, if they’re not learning from their failures and growing, they’re going to die, it’s a cycle. And so if you’re going to go work for someone or. You know, from a student to go become an employer, your own boss. You understand, you have to understand that you always have to keep changing and adapting, or the business is going to suffer because the world changes really fast around you. Look at us right now. We’re doing this whole podcast on zoom, zoom, one Zencaster on video. And this is something that we weren’t doing a year ago.

This is the technology is there. Now we have to shift. If someone is, is stuck in one way of doing it and doesn’t grow, then. Before, you know, it, you’re, you’re doing things that are more costly and less effective and all that kind of stuff. I didn’t like in the science stuff. I, you know, when, so Sam and I knew each other. Cause she was in the lab, down the hall from me. I was in a lab at UT for 16 years. She did a PhD in the lab, down the hall. And so even the stuff that we were doing. Then like technology in the sciences has gotten outrageous. You do one experiment and you have enough data that you could be sitting there processing it per year, you know, like from one experiment.

And so it used to be like, Oh, we need more people in the lab to get their hands on the pipettes to do the experiments. And now it’s like, Oh crap. We need bioinformaticians to process all this data from this one run, you know, it’s a totally different world, even at that scale because the technology. You know, can just show you so much, like when Google image, Google earth image now zoom in and see all of the roads and label them all and put the, you know, like same thing with genetic data or protein expression, or, you know, all of the things that happen in, you know, in science, in the units, vaccine step, whatever, but it’s totally different thinking and skill sets.

That makes sense. Same. I do have a question regarding. Thought processes. You mentioned that right now, a big, big thing is figuring out this experiment, right? So these are the things that you can’t learn and be better. It made me think though , um, once again, going back to the way school was done is you had to focus on your failures or the things that you’re not passing and become better at that area. The rest of the stuff. You a natural at or whatnot, but the stuff that you were not good as what you were supposed to focus on, one of the, for , um, Ways that business owners look at it, and this is the way I build companies or I built employees. I don’t try to pick people and put them in a position. I will create the position for the person, if that makes sense. So it’s like building a basketball team. I’m not going to have all one type of player. I want to make sure I’ve had a diversified team and I’m not going to try to fit one person. I’m not, if the person’s not good at three pointers, I’m not going to. Force him to sit there and it cost me too much money to force them to do three pointers.

So as I bring someone on, I, I really watch for their skills and what they’re really good at what they’re passionate about. And then I. See if there’s a place in the team for that, and then really have them focus on what they love the most. And it got me to thinking about the story I saw on the news maybe 10 years ago, where the entire education around this child was around horses Cause her passion was horses. So they were able to teach her everything, math and physics and everything around a horse. As the main theme of her entire education was around this horse. And. You know, she was able to Excel because that she was able to have that interest. So I just wonder having said all that, is that something that you look at in, in teaching as well as like, look, this student is really good at these areas.

How do we bring more of that out versus focusing on. Hmm, it sounds it’s very , um, and if you’re familiar with Maria Montessori, it sounds very a Montessorian approach where you find the passion of the child and then figure out how to teach him through that passion. Yeah. Um, there actually is , uh, a whole movement it’s called , um, asset based thinking where we’re trying to teach teachers how to look at a student and instead of seeing a deficit. Oh, they’re not good at this. I need to teach that you say, Oh, you’re good at this. Let me teach through it. So yeah, it is. It’s a whole thing called asset-based teaching. And , uh, we actually have a , uh, well, he’s been here a couple of years, but , um, we have an employee at ACC who is trained to do , um, a training on strengths based.

Training like , um, it’s in that case, it’s more kind of for an employer where, you know, you’ve got a team of people, how do identify the strengths of your team and then arrange your team to it. But we , um, starting in the fall, actually we are at our program is going to the kickoff of our program is going to be him coming to teach our teachers how to do that so that , um, yeah. Yeah. So that our staff, our teachers have that in there. They’re there. You know, their, their lexicon, their toolbox, they can, they could go in and they can look and they can go, okay, you have these skills, you know, they have the ability to, to , um, to even know what the skills are, right. Like, cause like I said, most people that are teachers.

Have been, I’ve never been taught how to teach and they’ve not been taught how to lead. Most of them are not business owners or they don’t have that , um, that background. And so even, you know, the important, they don’t have a staff right. At the importance of group work. Like we’ve known that for ever you, you know, you can’t have a student who’s never worked with anybody else and then send them out to a job where they have a team. Like it just doesn’t work. But unless you teach your teachers how to. Establish healthy groups and teach your students how to be in a group. You know, like there that’s not been there. So yes, absolutely. That is a big thing that our program has has. Um, and actually ACC has really been trying to do that asset based instead of deficit based mentality. So many of our students come in with a deficit. They come in feeling like they’re not good students. That’s, you know, they’ve never done well at school or they didn’t get into their college. And so they’re not good. And so we have to shift that mindset to that asset. You’re good at this pursued this one of the things.

Yeah. One of the things that , um, that made me think about it a little bit was just as a, as a, you know, an employer when you’re looking at, at building these teams and we as so. Is the competence level. So you’re talking about, you know, there’s so many as you are going through school, there’s all these questions. What do I want to be? What I want to do? There’s all these decisions that you’re trying to figure out, but if you’re allowed to play, fail, understand working teams that passionate will come out. But the other thing is, is, and Nancy, you mentioned this the other day is just the, there’s another. Mentality shift that I think needs to change.

And it’s, it’s really knowing that we’re all human and we don’t have the directions, not the direction, but no matter how successful many businesses you have or failures, you’ve got, you just have experience. And, you know, we’re just, we’re just humans. And so the ability to be able to connect with your employer or another mentor and have frank conversations and not worry about, Oh, I’m taking up too much of their time.

And that happens. You know, every day, all day long, and it’s not just in school, it just, it just happens. So just having that confidence, that ability, and I think Nancy, you mentioned one of the neat things is about having the space is that you are able to have students that have some knowledge, be able to teach some business owners that didn’t know certain things that gives them more stride in their step. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we have students that, you know, like I said, that maintained and run this equipment and all this things and. It’s true that PhD scientists slash CEOs tend to tend to think highly of themselves. So they do kind of know, especially in lab, that’s their comfort zone. They were like, I know this, but they may not know that particular instrument.

And so they’ll come to me and say, Hey Nancy, can you show me how to use this thing? And I’ll turn around and say, Hey Jolie, can you show him how to use that thing? And so now you have a two year student. Like training , uh, PhD scientists, how to use a piece of equipment. And it’s true. You watch the PhD scientist kind of, you know, reality check themselves and you know, to your student kind of, you know, up their confidence and it’s hugely impactful I mean, it makes them walk in to the job after the internship and confidently apply for that job. Like, I kind of use this stuff. I just ran this whole  place. Yeah, I that’s another huge benefit I see from the mentorship type of hands-on learning is just feeling good day. One of going into the job and understanding of what what’s required of versus pick them though.

Like I have a hard time. No, I mean, there’s a personality type, right. Of somebody that’s going to walk in and I go, Oh yeah, Just run it. And they’re like, but I don’t know how to work. That thing. I’m like manuals on the thing, you know, like giving them that freedom and having them embrace it. There are some people that do, and some people are like, well, I’m going to read the manual one more time. And then you check with them a week later. Like, how’s it going? They’re like, well, I think I’m going to do it this week. And then you check with them a week later. They’re like, well, I’m like, okay, got it. Right. You know, and it’s just. They’re afraid to fail  paralysis by analysis. 

And I’m like, if you were going to break that, I wouldn’t be telling you, just go do it. Right. And I’m like, I’m in my office. You’re welcome to come grab me if you want help with it, but I trust you to just do it. And they’re the people that have that personality trait that really kind of walk in and, and embrace that. Even if they’re like quaking in their boots, when they do it are the ones that all have really good jobs in, in town. Like, cause they. Yeah, they embrace that, that thing. You’re talking about, Dan of just. I got to just walk in and try. Yeah, you got to try fail it. It’s not that bad to fail. It’s actually a good thing. I’m learning from it. If I break it yelled at, but even just the whole thing you were talking about, about exploring all the different things and you’ll find your thing, but often schools aren’t set up to let you, I mean, when I went to school the first time I went to college twice because I failed the first time. Right. 

Basically I was doing that. I was just taking classes. That sounded interesting. And I was like, okay, let’s see where it leads. And they were like, okay, it’s this third year. You have to declare major am I can, I want to show you that the kids get to sort of work this way. And they’re like, no, you have to declare something. And I was like, no, I’m not ready. And they said, well, you can’t register for classes. So I dropped out, you know, and I dropped out for eight years because I didn’t want to pick something. I, you know, and so it’s. You don’t often have the time to luxuriously take classes. They’re also expensive. Right? 

Right There’s a lot that goes in. There’s a lot that goes into it. One of the businesses that I run in written in my trading done financial planning for years. And so finance is big, whenever it comes to how to wisely spend and be more efficient on things. And I’ve done a lot of research around education and how much tuition is and how much it’s grown and how its inflation is You know how the , uh, outpace of inflation and, and just how much school debt there is across the nation. It’s like second to housing. It is in the trillions. It’s insane. And so what that means though, and, and the way I look at it, big picture is it means that your decisions have to be, you know, you can’t be forced into down a path.

You can’t be like, choose this. You’re your third year now, choose what you’re going to be the rest of your life. Cause that pressure alone, you know, you’re spending a lot of money as, as you pointed out, every person is investing in their future. And just having that system where you have to do something on this, in this. Framework it doesn’t jive for everybody doesn’t work for everybody. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be what you do for the rest of your life, but nobody tells you that, you know, I, I, we work with a bunch of people in the community, my other lab spaces and other incubator type things that support the bio-sciences in Austin. And we have a learning series that we started. It’s mostly geared at grad students at UT be in postdocs because. They are trained to be professor and the professor jobs are so competitive and nobody’s going to get them and nobody’s telling them along the way, first of all, you better have a plan and you’re probably going to need more than just your PhD.

So you better take the time to take that computer class or that business class or whatever it is, but nobody’s telling them that. And they, so we have a learning series that we do monthly and we it’s called candid conversations. And it’s basically find somebody who has what looks like. From the outside of the sweet little gig and they’ve got this great job in there. And most people look at that and go, Oh man, they did this really strategically. They went and did this and then they did this and then they got the job. They want it. And it’s like, no, they did this. And then they got laid off and then their husband moved across this thing and they had to find something in another town and they assembled on this thing.

Like most paths are like that. And people are going through these things, Kabul, whatever I decided to has to be what I do for the rest of my life, which is totally what I thought, you know, and that’s why I dropped out. But yeah, it’s a lot of pressure there. There’s a lot of pressure there of the. I’m going to call it 150 interviews I’ve done of the various entrepreneurs that I’ve interviewed. I have yet to find one that is doing what they studied in college. That’s they didn’t start a business of what they started in college. It’s it’s there’s there’s there’s definitely a. Point a point where you can see what the, how their life is and just what you just described. I can see how they got to the business that they’re doing now, but it is a long journey from college.

And then you pick up things along the way and you connect the dots and then you launch something. But it’s really fascinating to hear the story of how they got, where they got. And back to your, what you were saying earlier is just this, this imagination of, of. What things should be a straight line. It never is. And that’s what I love about these stories because it makes everybody more human. You’re like, Oh, that person’s just like me. They have these kinds of failures and relationships and start overs and this and that. And yet they still were able to do accomplish what they wanted to accomplish. So they let themselves well that, I, I mean, I feel like we’re, that’s a perfect example of going back to what we were just talking about, about being stepping out and being willing to fail and. You know, like I’m trained in this, but like an opportunity is, is over here and it’s kind of adjacent and I didn’t take that class and can I really do it? And that’s, that goes into that. Being willing to, you know, play with the machine, even though nobody trains you on how to do it, just knowing that we may not get it perfect.

But you know, you can do this. That’s something that we can teaching in the classroom, right? Like teaching them how to. Trust their instincts find the information like, so there was a, there’s a, a connection to a couple I wants to advise two years ago, during 2007, the layoffs, remember the layoffs, the first wave.

And I remember that this couple came and they worked for the same company. It was in semi conductors and they had been at the company like 30 years. Right. So old school learning old school, job factory, we’re doing this thing. Well, then all these semiconductor jobs left the country. They all like, you know, The con.

And so, uh, this couple’s literally in panic and in tears, in my office, trying to figure out what they’re going to do. And they, they, they were thinking about selling their home. And I mean, they just were just panicking about what had happened and come to find out they were pretty well off financially. And I had to. Put it all on the wall and show them how things were going to be. Okay. And they had enough income to continue paying the house and all that kind of stuff, but it was just this, they had never learned to fail. And just until it hit them even college, 30 years in a career life, and it comes at you fast and you gotta be able to critically think, what am I going to do next?

How am I going to adapt?  And people are more adaptable than they give themselves credit. For me, you see this with kids, like people like say, Oh my God, the COVID it’s gonna damage my kids. Yeah. It’s going to be a bummer, but there are kids that get abused and they adjust, you know, like I think COVID me, right. A fail, getting fired from a job or laid off yet. It’s going to suck, but it’s also survive. Right? Live differently and, and be resilient for sure. And I think humans are, humans are incredibly resilient. You think about all the things that we’ve had in the last 20 years that we’ve had to, as a society, had to confront and then how we, it shocks at first and then you get used to it. And then you adapt. You’re living in that happens in all areas of life. For sure. Well, I totally enjoyed this conversation. I think that there’s a lot of benefit from the listeners, the audiences, young and older , uh, to listen about how academia is changing to adapt towards the future and how , uh, Samantha and ACC and various people there. Nancy with with the bio-sciences incubator, I’m science incubator, Jake bio-science incubator. Um, See, I fail all the time, see that over and over. And I can’t learn, I can’t learn just taking me hard to take me longer to learn that lesson. It’s I’ve been flogged in. I’d say he’s got to punish people really aggressively to make them learn Google it, just Google it.

Yeah, it says on the screen bioscience incubator , but I really enjoyed it. I think there’s a lot of. Really great nuggets about how from business perspective business has to change in , uh, all the time. And so education to get there also has to adjust and I’m loving the efficiencies that are being built , uh, with the learning, because that’s what I’m hoping is that as, as Sam makes progress with all of that kind of stuff in the academic side, That it opens up opportunities for the academic side to work over here, the incubator, right

More students coming out of that program, more faculty wanting to get involved. You know, my goal is to have faculty from every department in this college, like you said, they’re running their companies and they already know the bio science part, but they don’t know is. The CAD design or the website development, or how to make a video of their slick cool technology or whatever it is. And ACC is just like a treasure trove of expertise. And if we could get everybody to embrace what she’s talking about and get them to. Encourage the students to embrace that maybe we could be a machine. Love it. Love it.  Well, thanks for being on the show. I can’t wait to share this episode out and have some of that new stuff. Go out to , uh, the kids that are listening. Thank you. Bye.