EvCC Biology Instructor Teaches Science through Music

Imagine the song “Sugar, Sugar” with slightly different lyrics. 

Glucose -- ah, sugar sugar --
You are my favorite fuel
From the blood-borne substrate pool.
Glucose -- monosaccharide sugar --
You're sweeter than a woman's kiss
'Cause I need you for glycolysis.

It sounds like this. Everett Community College biology instructor Greg Crowther wrote these lyrics to help his students learn about the role of glucose in exercise. The song parody has more than 915,000 views on YouTube. 

And there are many more  where that came from. 

“When I started teaching, I wondered if these kinds of songs might have some educational value, or might at least make class time more enjoyable,” Crowther said. 

Crowther, who has been teaching at EvCC since January, co-authored a research study on the subject  that was recently published in the International Journal of Science Education, Part B. “Songwriting to learn: how high school science fair participants use music to communicate personally relevant scientific concepts” explains that using music could make STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) content more accessible to students and enhance their engagement in learning.

Crowther studied over a decade’s worth of student music projects submitted to a Seattle science fair. About 30 percent of the student-created songs were instrumental, so science content had to be conveyed in other ways. 

“One of the most exciting findings, for me, was that many of the student musicians did NOT see music simply as a mechanism for delivering science facts as song lyrics,” Crowther said. “Rather, they often thought deeply about how choices of instruments, rhythms, etc. could also contribute meaning.”

Crowther took piano lessons from 7th to 12th grade and sang in various school choirs. As a grad student, he made up song parodies about things he was learning (for example, "Take Me to the Liver"  about cholesterol metabolism, to the tune of "Take Me to the River").

“My first class of students (Comparative Animal Physiology at the University of Puget Sound, Fall 2002) responded very positively to the songs, which inspired me to keep using them and to study their effects,” Crowther said. 

Several commenters on “Glucose, Glucose” said the song helped them learn biology concepts. Some go even further. 

“To whoever (sic) made this, Please make some more. We are begging you. Yours sincerely, Science geek and music lover,” wrote one commenter.

In his biology classes, you might learn from one of these numbers: 

• Pee Values.  “(This) is the song I sang at my EvCC job interview,” Crowther said. “I don't know exactly what the hiring committee thought of it, but they did offer me the job, so they couldn't have minded it that much.” 
• Hypohypothalamus.  “My favorite rap out of the raps that I've written,” he said.
• Cranial Nerve Functions.  “(This) is a somewhat more intricate song; its melody has 12 main pitches corresponding to the 12 cranial nerves. It takes a bit of extra time to explain, and more time for the students to learn, but it nicely complements other mnemonics that cover other aspects of the cranial nerves,” he said.

Crowther’s students can write songs for extra credit, earning more points for performing it and explaining what they learned. An EvCC nursing student wrote and performed “Nephron Song” about the kidneys, and a University of Washington-Bothell student wrote “Jose Glucose.”

Crowther has taught biology since 2002 at several Washington public universities and colleges and has performed lab research on the development of new malaria drugs and on muscle metabolism during exercise, among other subjects.