Honors colloquium courses provide a space where faculty can blend personal interests with professional expertise to create one-of-a-kind learning experiences and opportunities for creative exploration. These courses often bridge seemingly unrelated disciplines, and this is a hallmark of one of the most popular and frequently offered colloquium courses, Protein Portraits, taught by Phil McFadden.
In Protein Portraits, students explore protein molecules and create their own artistic renderings of their structures. Over 15 years of teaching the course, McFadden, a professor of practice of biochemistry and biophysics, has seen tea plant necrotic ring blotch virus reimagined as a hand-stitched tea cozy, prion proteins represented in a sculpture of a moody cow, and ranasmurfin — an electric-blue protein isolated from tree frog nests — transformed into a tropical Smurf-themed layer cake.
Why spend ten weeks observing, discussing and inventing molecular art? Students overwhelmingly give one answer: it’s fun; but it also allows them to revisit artistic passions pushed aside when their focus in college shifted to intensive, science-based studies. While many participants are STEM majors who also sculpt, bake or crochet, other students with no artistic background embrace the chance to creatively depict a protein using any medium of their choice. McFadden’s motivation for the course is deeper. "Art precedes science — this is important for students to understand,” he says. “No one has ever seen a molecule. Discoveries about proteins often stem from understanding their 3D structure, and we rely on molecular models — artistic renderings — to gain such knowledge.” Put another way: “We depend on art to make the invisible visible to our very thinking.”
He believes this foundational use of art is transformative not only in fields like structural biology, but also in student learning. “Incorporating artistic approaches into scientific study helps students jump ahead in the traditional learning hierarchy, moving quickly from understanding basic concepts to creating original work. Art connects abstract ideas to familiar, tangible experiences.” As an example, McFadden likens the use of molecular modelling kits in general chemistry courses to playing with Tinker Toys. “There’s comfort in that,” he says. “Those models are the savior for so many students; without them, it’s easy to get stuck at the ground floor.”
McFadden first introduced Protein Portraits in 2005 with this purpose in mind. “It was originally a course in the biochemistry and biophysics department, designed to help students in these majors develop an enhanced understanding of molecules studied in the biochemistry course sequence,” he explains.
Today, the course is accessible to honors students of any major, drawing together a diverse set of perspectives that contribute to the unique array of molecular art decorating an HC space at the course’s conclusion each spring. In June 2024, students’ protein portraits — ranging from rhodopsin depicted in floral arrangements to green fluorescent protein embodied in a glowing jellyfish sculpture — were displayed in the SLUG (the Honors College student learning space in Corvallis) for the HC community to enjoy.
Students intrigued by this cross-disciplinary approach — or the idea of exploring “the aesthetic alchemy of life,” as McFadden describes it — should watch for Protein Portraits during spring colloquium registration. Community members can look forward to updates about the next Protein Portraits show or explore past projects on the course website, which features student work dating back to 2010.
By Ana Tracy, HC Student Writer