in her 20th year
J ennifer S tauffer SCIENCE DEPARTMENT J ennifer Stauffer most certainly remembers her first day at Hopkins twenty years ago. She had a plan, and was super prepared. She had memorized her schedule (no small feat) and before her first Biology class in the afternoon, she wanted to take a walk to Baldwin to check her mailbox. There she found a package waiting for her, inconspicuously dotted with punctured holes, from her mom in Illinois, who is also a middle school science teacher. As she opened the box, she let out a scream. Her mom had sent her a live praying mantis in the mail! The unexpected gift not only helped Stauffer connect with her mom that first day, but also her students, who named the mantis “Queen” and crowned her their first class pet. Not long after, Stauffer’s brother, an entomologist, gifted her a male/female pair of Rhinoceros beetles, named Maggie and Al. Throughout the year, the students would ask Stauffer to teach with the beetles on her shoulders, which she happily did during Biology, sometimes pausing to collect one that had flown across the room. These treasured class pets not only brought an interactive element to the Biology coursework for her students, they also brought Stauffer a taste of home and family support from afar during what is typically the hardest year of teaching.
the preparation and logistics, I was energized every single day I came in, because I could see the kids’ passion for the subject at night. It was something I had never experienced before. And that synergy energized me to keep going, and still keeps me looking forward to each day and each new school year.” Stauffer came to Hopkins with a background in biology, chemistry, physics, and a graduate degree in Biophysical Chemistry. “I could not make up my mind, because I love science!” she said. At Hopkins, Stauffer has taught Biology and Chemistry, in addition to taking a turn as Science Department Chair. Most recently, she has been teaching Junior School Science, a challenge she welcomed for several reasons. It brought opportunities to develop an Earth Science curriculum focused on hands-on investigation and inquiry-based learning with her colleagues and also—as someone who considered herself a “closet geologist”— it enabled her to become an expert in the subject. Lastly, it allowed her to be in the classroom with the “unbridled enthusiasm and magical exuberance” of 7th graders. Over the years, Stauffer noticed a need for more extra- curricular science opportunities for students at Hopkins, so she helped to introduce the Science Olympiad and Junior School Science Bowl programs. She expresses great appreciation and admiration for her Science Department colleagues, with whom she is able to collaborate, innovate, and find inspiration. “We play to each other’s strengths,” she said, “and that’s one of the things I love about our department and Hopkins.”
While Stauffer describes her first year as an exhausting one, it proved career-defining.
“I knew I would love teaching, because of the intellectual challenge it posed, and the ability to share my passion about a subject,” she said. “But as exhausting as that year was in
VIEWS FROM THE HILL | 2023 • ISSUE 1
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