Professor Who Failed Genetics Wins Top Teaching Award

Dr. Neil Chilton failed his first genetics class and had a professor tell him his chromosome drawing looked like a spaceship. Last fall, he accepted Saskatchewan's Lieutenant Governor's Post-Secondary Teaching Award, the province's top honor for university educators.

The University of Saskatchewan parasitologist was the first in his family to finish high school. Growing up in working-class Australia in the 1970s, he entered "uncharted territory" when he started university, with no role models and little confidence.

His peers and professors were quick to write him off. One faculty examiner bluntly told him before a critical PhD qualifying exam: "You're not going to pass."

Chilton passed. He also won an award for best student presentation at a scientific conference that same year and got an apology from the professor who doubted him.

The turning point came when he found work he loved, chasing lizards across Australia's semi-arid zone and studying the ticks they carried. "I found something that I was good at, that I enjoyed," Chilton said.

Today, he's world-renowned for developing new tools to identify parasites and the bacteria they carry, including those linked to Lyme disease. He's earned all of USask's major teaching awards and an honorary doctorate from the University of Melbourne.

His early struggles shaped how he teaches. Chilton tells his graduate students he actually prefers when their research hits roadblocks because solving problems builds resilience for future careers.

The Ripple Effect

In lecture halls of 500 first-year biology students, Chilton insists "the back row is not a hiding place" and calls on everyone to speak up. He's cautious about making assumptions because he remembers how prejudgments nearly derailed his own path.

"People can succeed if you give them confidence," he said. His approach focuses on showing students what they already know how to do, then letting common sense carry them forward.

The parasitologist who was once underestimated now spends his career making sure no student feels the sting of doubt he once carried. That's a teaching philosophy worth celebrating.