Kathy Miller came to WashU in 1989 as a faculty member in the Department of Biology.  “I never thought I would be here for 30 years! Time goes by quickly,” she says.

In addition to chairing the department for a number of years and running her lab, which used genetic and molecular genetic techniques to alter the function of particular proteins of the actin cytoskeleton, over the course of her career Miller took on multiple leadership roles related to teaching. She directed the Amgen scholars program, WU-CIRTL (a Teaching Center program for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who are preparing for future faculty positions in STEM disciplines), and the HHMI Undergraduate Biological Sciences Education Program.

“I think teaching is a critical component of what we do,” Miller says. “All faculty should take pride in teaching and learn as much as possible about how people learn and how they can be effective and motivating teachers. It’s the same mind-set as one brings to research – a stance of life-long learning and experimentation, data collection, analysis, learning about what is known in the field and applying all those pieces to your teaching.”

Though she looks forward to a retirement free of grant-related and academic deadlines, Miller says she looks back at the biology department as “a great place to ‘grow up’ as a researcher and teacher.”

“It’s now more exciting than ever, with wonderful young faculty who are passionate about science and about teaching,” she adds. “Especially when I was chair of biology, and also through the many projects I have worked on that cross departmental and unit boundaries, I had the pleasure to get to know many wonderful people across campus and work with them to try to make the university and hopefully the world (maybe a little) better place.”