Robert Johnson enjoys making his students eager to learn about the world around them.
Donna Kopmar
Staff Writer

Robert Johnson is a BiologyProfessor here at Pierce College.He has worked on campus since the fall 1996.

Johnson is also a club advisor. Some of the clubs he has advised are Environmental Science Club, Mountain Bike Club, Flag Football Club, and Video Game Club.

Before coming to work at Pierce, he used to work between Highline Community College and Shoreline Community College.

What did you want to do when you were little?
Forest Ranger. I wanted to live out in the middle of nowhere. I always wanted to be something associated with science because I just have this desire to know about everything and that’s what science is.

What made you want to be a Biology Professor?
I originally wanted to be a physician and when I went to graduate school I was lucky enough to win a teaching assistantship.

What do you like most about being a biology professor?
I love working with my students. My personal task as a teacher is to try to get students interested in science, not to force-feed them vocabulary, but to kind of tickle their fancy and make them want to know more about the world around them.

I try to make them into children again. I want adults to have the non-stop desire to want to know that children have. Science allows for that.

What do students do that bugs you the most?
Plagiarism is an issue. It bothers me because students don’t have the confidence in themselves that they can write.

I try to get them to be confident in themselves to be better writers so they don’t have the need to copy and paste materials and identify it as their own.

Cheating, which falls under plagiarism, is one of my pet peeves. I try to teach in such a way that cheating isn’t necessary.

But it still happens and it does break my heart when I find out that it happens. Kind of squashes the high of teaching.

How do you feel about teaching at a Community College instead of a university?
I love community college. I love Pierce College.

I’m not just saying that. I started in Detroit at a community college so I know that it’s a way for some of us to get an affordable education.

What do you like most about working at Pierce?
I like the people here. My peers are great. I work with some very intelligent people who really do care about their students.

I enjoy the support staff here and obviously the students. I live an hour away from here. I just recently figured out that I drive 24,000 miles a year to go to work and go home. So there has to be something about being here that makes me do that.