Jerry Hagler

I grew up in a small town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California, where I enjoyed a childhood outdoors exploring the wildlife of the California chaparral. After completing my B.A. at UCSC I relocated from the coastal redwood forests of Santa Cruz to the high-rise forest of Manhattan and attended graduate school at Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences. There I studied the regulation of gene expression of the smallpox relative Vaccinia virus, receiving a Ph.D. in 1993. After marrying a fellow Cornell graduate, I moved to Boston for postdoctoral work at Harvard University, analyzing the molecular regulation of the immune system. Seeing an advertisement in Science Magazine for a position teaching laboratory research science to high school students, I shifted career paths, coming to Phillips Academy as the Visiting Scholar in Molecular Biology in 2000 (and eventually appointed a full instructor position in 2003), where I was bitten by the teaching bug. Initially I worked as the advisor and instructor for students working on independent laboratory research projects, and also teaching AP Biology and human genetics. More recently I've been teaching introductory and advanced biology courses, co-teaching several interdisciplinary courses, Scie-470 Human Origins and Scie-490 The Brain and You and have participated as a lecturer in such seminar courses as Bob Dylan, Justice, Law, Tyranny, London: Harbinger of Modernity and Darwin's (R)Evolution. My interests include all of the sciences and how they interaction with other fields of human endeavor, history and music. I also have three daughters who are recent PA graduates.