You Wnt some, you lose none: lessons learnt from a non-canonical immunology educator

Abstract

Pathways to tenured teaching positions are fraught with obstacles and require a combination of luck, perseverance and a competitive track record. Despite this, there are strategies that one can employ to increase your chances of success but, first and foremost, one must be an excellent communicator. Excellent communicators make for talented teachers, but one must also enjoy teaching or risk energy, i.e. your students will lack (co)stimulation. Academics who are new to teaching immunology need support from their community of practise (such as ASI Education Special Interest Groups) given that immunology can be challenging to teach. For every rule that we teach our students, there are equally many exceptions that confuse and confound. The complexity of our discipline also owes to the highly conceptual curriculum and abstract discipline language. To this end, this work seeks to provide advice to current and aspiring early-career immunology educators, utilising lessons learnt from my experience as an academic over the last decade. Topics include: understanding the needs of the student cohort; active learning strategies to engage students; ethical dilemmas for publishing pedagogical papers and the attainability of tenure. Like exogenously processed antigens, there is no hard and fast rule about one's pathway to academia; some take the canonical road (MHC class II) and others break the rules (cross-presentation). Whichever the path, teaching is a rewarding career and as long as you view your students as collaborators you have nothing to lose.