Making sense out of bacteria and other ‘bugs’

For two years now, she’s been sending toothbrushes along with veterinary medical students headed out on farm calls. Their directive: Rub the toothbrush on cows with ringworm.

“I’m trying to get a sample of a fungi called Tricophyton,” says Patricia Sharp, an academic staff member who teaches bacteriology at the School of Veterinary Medicine. “We’ve had trouble getting it to grow.”

As part of the school’s bacteriology, immunology, and parasitology teaching team, Sharp’s role is to obtain specimens, make them available under the microscope or in Petri dishes during hands-on teaching laboratories, and help veterinary medical students find what they’re supposed to find. Some of the slides haven’t been replaced since she first joined the school’s staff in 1985, and she’d like to update them.

“I’m always trying to find a way to make the class a better learning experience,” she says. Real-life examples of what veterinarians will need to be able to identify in the field are a key. For example, students might be asked to isolate a bacteria (or sometimes more than one) from a swab or urine sample.

Sharp learned to make material fun and interesting from colleagues at the school who served as role models. And while she has continued to expand her own knowledge over the years, she remains able to break it down to ground level for second-year veterinary medical students who are facing the subject for the first time.

Whether she’s teaching them about agglutination (clumping of cells) in immunology (as when different blood types are co-mingled), or about problems that could be encountered when feeding animals silage (fermented feed), her material is very practical and useful for the future veterinarian. She works to make the information fresh and applicable to real-life situations.

“Patricia does a super job with the students,” says Ronald Schultz, head of the Department of Pathobiological Sciences. “She has a way of being able to digest complex material. Like a mother robin, she feeds it back to the students a bit at a time, so they don’t get indigestion.”

Emily Buskey, a fourth-year student, was in her second year and pregnant, struggling with morning sickness, while taking the immunology course. “It wasn’t comfortable or easy for me to learn at that point, but Tricia was very unflappable,” she recalls. “She is cool as a cucumber when dealing with people who are freaking out. She keeps at it, repeating information until it sinks in.”

Sharp’s degree is in psychology. But she explains that there are a lot of experiments in psychology, so she gained knowledge of experimental methods and controls, which in turn applies to what she now teaches.

She likes the variety associated with her job and has found that she really enjoys teaching. One day might find her setting up slides on microscopes. Another day she’ll provide the components of test kits, including reagents, pipettes or graduated cylinders. Then she’ll find herself correcting papers, making copies of case studies to hand out to students, or distributing swabs or test tubes that contain one or more bacteria for students to identify.

“Students really seem to relate to her,” Schultz says. “Tricia makes sure that if anybody needs help, she’s there to give it.”

As he sees it, an academic staff instructor such as Sharp is easier for students to access.

“It’s harder for a student to connect with a professor who has other things on his plate besides just teaching,” Schultz says. “The professor is distracted by research, and students have to make appointments to see them.”

Between semesters, Sharp works in the laboratory, doing projects for faculty or ordering materials for the teaching labs. She also helps with research projects, such as a bovine mastitis project that tested a new dairy cow teat sealant on the farm. The school’s Food Animal Production Medicine team wanted to determine if the sealant was effectively preventing bacteria from moving up into the cow’s udder. Based on tests run by Sharp, they were able to determine that the product was indeed successful.

And every chance she gets, she continues to encourage students and colleagues who are going on farm calls to bring back a sample of Tricophyton.

One of these days, the sample will actually grow, and Sharp will have a new slide in her arsenal to keep teaching veterinary medical students for years to come.