Institutions Columbia University Fields Biochemistry | Institution Columbia University Name Deborah Mowshowitz | |
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Doctoral students Helene Stark and Rajiv Chandra Notable awards Presidential Outstanding Teaching Award Children Zvi Mowshowitz and Avi Mowshowitz Alma mater Brandeis University, Albert Einstein College of Medicine People also search for James E. Darnell, Sheldon Penman, Phillip Allen Sharp | ||
Doctoral advisor James E. Darnell | ||
Deborah Mowshowitz (née Bernhardt) is an American biochemist and Professor of Biology at Columbia University. Mowshowitz was trained in pure biochemistry and has done research in RNA processing. Her more recent work has focused on pedagogy and biology education. She is especially known for employing problems of historical significance, including many Nobel-Prize winning problems, in her introductory courses and in 1999 received the Presidential Outstanding Teaching Award. Her son Zvi Mowshowitz is a professional Magic: The Gathering player and former Team World Champion.
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Education
Mowshowitz was awarded a BA from Brandeis University and entered the Sue Golding Graduate Division of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. At Albert Einstein, Mowshowitz studied biochemistry under James E. Darnell and received her PhD in 1969 for a thesis entitled "tRNA synthesis in HeLa cells".
Research
Mowshowitz was Darnell's first graduate student at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. As Darnell's student, Mowshowitz worked on RNA processing; up until that point, it had been thought that preprocessing was limited to pre-rRNA, but Mowshowitz demonstrated the existence of pre-tRNAs as well. Mowshowitz used gel electrophoresis to separate smaller, slower-migrating pre-tRNA candidate particles which had been labeled with radioactive uridine. She observed the pre-tRNAs under methionine-starvation conditions and proposed that the pre-tRNAs were longer than tRNAs proper. Early work by Mowshowitz focused on pure biochemistry, in areas such as enzyme assays and biosynthesis in yeast. She has also published in the Journal of Virology and in Analytical Biochemistry.
Teaching
Mowshowitz joined the faculty at Columbia when Darnell, her thesis adviser at AECOM, was appointed to a professorship at Columbia and informed her of an open faculty position. While Mowshowitz is trained in research, she decided to focus on teaching after joining the Columbia faculty, and much of her more recent work is in the areas of pedagogy and biology education in particular. Mowshowitz personally teaches the introductory biology sequence at Columbia, as well as an introductory biology class for non-scientists. She also oversees the biology department at Columbia as Director of Undergraduate Programs and Lab Operations.
Mowshowitz believes in a problem-based learning approach to teaching biology, emphasizing applying deeper principles over rote memorization of pathways and structures. She has stated that she assigns students advanced problems based on famous historical experiments in her introductory classes in order to encourage them to synthesize knowledge to solve problems. Some of the problems she has set on exams ask students to make the critical deductions in experiments which earned their original authors the Nobel Prize. She describes her approach to the course as intended to "teach things that are very fundamental, which have been known for a long time, along with whatever the latest developments are. And [...] to relate it all to the lives of [students]". Asked about the difficulty of her class, Mowshowitz commented:
A surprising number of people have the misconception that I'm teaching this advanced, super theoretical stuff. It's true that I cover a little bit of graduate-level bio, but only insofar as it helps my students understand the undergrad material. And because there are undergrads taking my class who finished college biology in high school, or are currently doing graduate-level research, and I want to keep them interested too. But regardless, most of what my class covers is the same as what you'd get in the first two years of biology anywhere else; I just try to go a little faster, and a little deeper.
Her introductory biology course has been described as "the most theoretically rigorous intro bio course in the United States" and is available as a widely used massive open online course. In 1999, she received the Presidential Outstanding Teaching Award.