Associate Professor of Biology Danae Schulz has been at Harvey Mudd College for nine years. She teaches courses in molecular biology and researches gene regulation in African trypanosome parasites, which cause sleeping sickness in Sub-Saharan Africa. Find out more about her, including what she does over her summer break, what she\u2019s learning right now and more in this Q-and-A.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s such a cliche to say the best thing about Harvey Mudd is the people, but the thing is, the people really are the best! My colleagues on the faculty, our staff members and our students are all pulling toward this beautiful goal of putting knowledge into the world and lifting each other up as we do so. I also love that moment when I\u2019m chatting with a student about something super complicated, and I can see in their face when they start to understand it. It\u2019s heartwarming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
People outside Harvey Mudd are always asking me what I do with my \u201csummers off.\u201d I do research for nearly the entire summer, so the summers off are kind of a myth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019d enjoy being in dining services and handing people these absolutely beautiful salads that you can tailor exactly the way you want. I always have a huge smile on my face when I get this amazing salad, and I\u2019d love to be the one making that happen for people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A swimming pool!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fernando\u2019s spicy dressing! Fernando is my hero. On top of the fancy salad, it is just the best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I started in 2016, it was common for faculty members to grab lunch at the dining hall and sit on the upper deck. You could wander up there and there would always be fellow faculty members to sit with. I got to know a lot of faculty members that I would never have otherwise interacted with that way. It was also amazing to have these really experienced colleagues offering advice and encouragement. They were all so wise and really helped me as I launched my courses and my research program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve played the violin since I was 5, and I took a break from playing for a while when I started my job here because I was just so overwhelmed. I\u2019m just getting back into playing chamber music, and it feels like a balm. I also got jealous of my daughter\u2019s ballet lessons, so I, too, signed up for ballet lessons. It turns out that ballet is hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Showing up is so important. If you show up to the thing, you are 90% on your way to success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Swimming laps. Something about flip turns just really calms me down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I would create all the time I need to help all the people I want to help!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am trying to learn to dance. It\u2019s a nice activity because there are no screens involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I recently read Charles Dickens\u2019 David Copperfield<\/em> and Barbara Kingsolver\u2019s Demon Copperhead<\/em> (the modern retelling) at the same time. I alternated chapters (they have the same number). Both books were amazing, and it was so interesting to see Kingsolver update the Dickens to the modern opioid crisis. I learned a lot from both books about perseverance and survival in the most difficult circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Does the Nutcracker<\/em> count as a concert? I took my 5-year-old and she was a fan. Can\u2019t beat Tchaikovsky and pirouettes!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Associate Professor of Biology Danae Schulz has been at Harvey Mudd College for nine years. She teaches courses in molecular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":15022,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,217],"class_list":["post-14975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty","category-unlisted"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14975"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15039,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14975\/revisions\/15039"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What is the last concert you attended?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n