Faculty Spotlight:
Camille Tessitore King
Associate Professor of Psychology
B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Psychology, University of Virginia
What do neuroscience and cooking have in common? According to Dr. Camille Tessitore King, Associate Professor of Psychology at Stetson and winner of the University's 2011 McEniry Award for Excellence in Teaching, both require knowing when you must follow the recipe precisely and when you can be a little creative. (In neuroscience, the "recipes" are protocols for staining brain cells.) So, in exploring students' potential aptitude for neuroscience, she sometimes asks whether they like to cook. Camille brings the same passion to both neuroscience and cooking—and to her work with students, both in and out of the classroom.
Initially, Camille thought she might want to be a Navy seal (an idea she rejected because she might have to spend time in a submarine), a lawyer (abandoned after a miserable stint in a law office), or a doctor. It wasn't until an undergraduate course in biological psychology at the University of Virginia with Peter Brunjes that she considered a career in teaching—and not because of an immediate passion for the subject but because she found his teaching so inspiring. She wanted to be a teacher just like him. But it was her undergraduate research experience in a neuroscience lab that sparked her interest in becoming a neuroscientist, and the experience of discovering that if you manipulated an animal's brain, you could see the results in its behavior: "these cells and neurons create what we think is untouchable . . . . Touching a brain, cutting a brain . . . you can't teach it out of a book." It is just this experience of discovery that she tries to create for her students at Stetson.
By all accounts, she does exactly that. In the many nominations Camille received for the McEniry Award, students repeatedly noted her passion and energy; they described her classes as challenging and her teaching as inspiring. As one faculty colleague wrote, "she is the teacher I dream of becoming." She also shares her knowledge more broadly, in the lectures she gives each semester on how the brain learns and remembers (part of the Betty Batson Bell Lecture Series) and in other talks she regularly gives in the community.
After completing her undergraduate degree in Psychology at the University of Virginia, Camille began graduate work (also at UVA), working in David Hill's lab and specializing in developmental neuroanatomy. After completing the PhD, she went on to work as a post-doc in Charlotte Mistretta's lab at the University of Michigan and then Alan Spector's at the University of Florida. Her collaboration with Dr. Spector, who now is at FSU, has continued for 15 years. In 2001, she was appointed assistant professor at Stetson; she was tenured and promoted to associate in 2007. She has published numerous articles on taste nerve regeneration, neuronal activity, and taste-related behaviors in rats; she has also been a principal or co-investigator on numerous national grants from such prestigious organizations as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation—including one with her husband Michael King, professor of Biology at Stetson. She was also honored for her outstanding work with undergraduates with a Faculty Advisor Research Grant from the International Honor Society in Psychology (Psi Chi).
For all her focused concentration in the lab (where it's "just me and my brains"), Camille is as active outside the lab as she is calm and still within it. She likes to push herself physically as well as intellectually, and so she has joined the Stetson group that will participate in the Tough Mudder in Tampa this December. She plays on several of Stetson's intramural teams: flag football, soccer, and softball. She set herself the goal of completing a 10-mile run in under 80 minutes a few years ago and clocked in at 79:46. A few summers back, she climbed a rock waterfall in Costa Rica.
Last summer, she participated in Hatter Trek, an outdoor adventure experience designed to help incoming students become part of the Stetson community over the summer, prior to the start of classes. She described the experience as "incredible" in terms of the relationships students formed with one another—the kinds of friendships that will last. What's more, it gave students the chance to see that "faculty members are people with lives outside classroom walls."
Her secret ambition? To enroll in MIT's graduate program in science writing so as to strengthen her contribution to the general public's understanding of science…or open a restaurant.
--Karen Kaivola
September 2011