Dr. Judith Parrish
Associate Professor of Biology
Academic Bio
 Dr. Judy Damery Parrish, Associate Professor of Biology, received her B.S. from Eastern Illinois University in 1972 with double major in Zoology and botany; her M.S. in Plant Biology in 1973, and her Ph.D. in Plant Ecology in 1978, both from the University of Illinois. She was a Research Associate in Forestry at the University of Illinois from 1978-1985, and a farm and nursery partner 1978-1994. She came to the biology department at Millikin in 1995 and teaches plant biology, plant physiology, local flora, attributes of life, ecology and evolution, and environmental biology courses, as well as the summer Field Ecology course at Lake Shelbyville and Ecological Journeys. So far, she has taught eleven travel courses under Ecological Journeys, centering on biology with a strong emphasis on environmental justice and fair trade, taking students to Costa Rica, Alaska, South Africa, and Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. She is also a part of the Teacher Education Program at Millikin, and works with the Millikin Education Department to develop science workshops for teachers in the Decatur/Macon County area and Millikin education students. Her research interests include plant community ecology, with emphasis on pollination relationships and niche interactions, in remnant prairies in Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, and leaf responses to herbivore damage. She likes to involve students in undergraduate research.
Teaching philosophy
In one of my first-year biology classes, one of my professors helped me see connections between facts and the real nature of science. One evening as I agonized over how to distinguish among what seemed to be countless identical species of pickled minnows in jars, Dr. Ed Moll sat down with me and began pointing out key characters, and helped me make sense of them. Not only did he point out physical characteristics, like the spot on the tail of one or the upturned mouth of another, but he kept asking me to hypothesize about why the mouth was turned up, or what adaptive value the spot might have. I began to have much more interest in the facts, and desire to learn more, as he helped me construct a framework to pin the facts on and organize what seemed like chaos into meaningful concepts. Seeing all the differences among species as amazing adaptations to different environments, and learning the unifying concepts and patterns that run through all that diversity, inspired me to want to share that epiphany.
My passion as a teacher is to facilitate sustained love of the study of our natural world. Understanding and appreciating how life works is a major part of loving life itself. An important part of becoming educated is a retention of this ability to wonder, and a matured skill to ask and seek answers to questions about what we experience. My main job as a biology teacher is to rekindle and nourish a sense of wonder and curiosity of our natural world while also developing the art of asking questions, especially questions that can be tested experimentally, and then to help students find ways to answer those questions and construct a framework to organize information into a comprehensible system. Sometimes that means I must find a way to tactfully let a student know that the cool “organism” they have discovered in the pond water sample is really an air bubble and that he or she needs to focus on a different plane to view one of the delightful creatures we are targeting. Students must feel comfortable enough to make the “mistake” of calling me over to identify the air bubble so that they will stick with the skill and content building lessons long enough to find the truly awesome planes. They have to be able to ask some “silly” questions to get to the deep questions, without having curiosity squelched by embarrassment.
In my classes, I work to make the concepts of biology understandable and the tools of science accessible to all. Not all of my students will be biologists, but all of them are alive! Furthermore, continued life on our planet will depend upon understanding how bodies work and how our physical and biological environments can be preserved or maintained for the best quality of life. I want to help prepare citizens who can make informed decisions about the many critical scientific issues that they will face, including genetic engineering and control of global warming. I also want to instill in as many people as possible an appreciation for diverse natural systems. Baba Dioum, a Senegalese conservationist, wrote that, "In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, we will understand only what we are taught." My goals as an educator are to help students understand and love the incredible wonders of our world, to prevent or combat science phobia by employing a variety of methods to present content, and to help students link that content to their experiences. I see myself as a science activist with a mission to engage, educate, and stimulate students of all ages.
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