Payne recently was inducted into UT Austin's Academy of Distinguished Teachers, in recognition of her efforts to help overhaul the microbiology curriculum, to encourage active learning by students instead of rote memorizing and to foster peer relationships. I hope they come away with an appreciation that science is not just a collection of facts, but a way of interpreting the world around us. Textbooks don't just spring from nowhere. They are the result of people doing experiments in the lab. In the lab, Payne likes to pair graduate and post-doctoral students with younger colleagues.
Undergraduates gain more personal attention and older students improve their teaching skills.
Payne also insists her students learn to communicate clearly about science with non-scientists and she urges that liberal arts majors be exposed to the basics of science. One of our responsibilities as educators is making sure that everybody and every student who leaves this University has an appreciation of science. These are the people who are going to be making the decisions. We need to assure that our students are broadly educated and that scientists can communicate.