Dr. Monte Helm is not just an educator, but a life-long learner who embodies the true spirit of academic curiosity. With over 30 years of experience in research and teaching, his flexibility and willingness to take the scenic route; postdoctoral research roles, Deputy Director at a national laboratory and a couple of sabbaticals, made all the difference. In this episode, Paolo chats with Monte Helm, a respected Professor of Chemistry at Metropolitan Community College in Kansas City about his journey through crown-phosphine and phosphine ligand synthesis research, and how mentors and sabbaticals played a vital role in his development. Tune in to learn about the joys and challenges of each role, and how Dr. Helm found his true calling in teaching at a community college. If you've ever felt uncertain about the conventional career path, this episode could give you the inspiration you need.
Anyone that’s followed this podcast will know that Paolo’s final question to each guest is, “What advice would you like to share with younger scientists just starting their career?” Here, our guest, Dr. Monte Helm, professor of chemistry at Metropolitan Community College in Kansas City, shares advice that he clearly lives by, which is, “… be flexible ii your career and follow what you think you’ll be passionate about.”
While Monte’s academic training is in inorganic chemistry, he’ll tell you he’s always cared about teaching as much as the subject itself. Join us to meet this lifelong learner and teacher, that’s parlayed his passion for phosphine chemistry and teaching into roles as a postdoctoral researcher, a professor at an undergraduate research institution, a deputy director at a national laboratory, and now a teaching-focused role at a community college. A set of roles that definitely demonstrates flexibility!
In addition to learning about the fundamental research Dr. Helm has done in crown-phosphine and phosphine ligand synthesis, we learn about his unconventional career path and the key role that mentors and sabbatical opportunities played in its development. He talks openly about the joys and challenges of each role, about his motivations for each career change, and his current love of teaching at a community college where he’s able to focus solely on teaching to students that may not have had positive primary educational experiences in science.
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Monte Helm, PhD 00:06
Here, I think this is the best teaching I've ever done in my life, but it's because they've asked me to focus on teaching.
Paolo 00:14
Earlier this season on Bringing Chemistry to Life, we spoke with Dr. Izzy Lamb, a chemistry professor who discovered a passion for teaching budding scientists. Today, we're diving back into education with Dr. Monte Helm, who has been a professor at Metropolitan Community College in Kansas City since 2016. I'm your host, Paolo Braiuca with Thermo Fisher Scientific, and I loved hearing Dr. Helm's fresh and thoughtful perspective on balancing research and mentorship. I'm sure you will, too. We began by asking Monte about his first formative experiences with science at his high school in North Dakota.
Monte Helm, PhD 00:56
I was good at math, I enjoyed math, but I didn't quite know what to do with the career. And I had a high school chemistry teacher that was a great teacher and I had time in my schedule my senior year. And he said, “Why don't you just take an independent study credit with me and help me prep labs and, you know, work in chemistry stockroom." And that was kind of the start of it, then I was like, "Wow, this is kind of cool. Like I kind of like mixing chemicals and seeing, doing the calculations that go with it, because I like the math too."
Paolo 01:26
So, after your experience, you decided to just go deeper into that. You picked chemistry as a major, and how did you develop?
Monte Helm, PhD 01:33
I got very lucky. I received a scholarship to a local college, Minnesota State University at Moorhead. And it was a brand-new program called the honors apprentice program. And part of it was that it would cover tuition, but you had to also do a research project or work with a mentor on campus. And I went in thinking, "Well, I did this chemistry thing in high school, maybe I'll try that in college." And I got paired up with a professor in the chemistry department. And the first project I worked on with him was just kind of taking different colors, different ions, laying them down on a piece of paper and then spreading over cations or anions to make the color show up. So, it was kind of painting with chemistry. I thought that was pretty cool. The first year was kind of just sort of getting me in, getting me kind of like what it like is to do research and to do chemistry. The second year, I really connected with a newer professor at that time, Gary Edmondson, and he was doing research on pentaborane, so very air sensitive pyrophoric chemistry. And I just fell in love with it. You know, he got a grant, he got a new glove box, he let me help it set it up. I set up the Schlenk lines. And yeah, just learning how to manipulate the compounds in that air free environment was so cool.
Paolo 02:49
What was the thrill? Knowing that if you screw it up, you blow up? What was the,
Monte Helm, PhD 02:53
Yeah. You know, I think I think part of it is I like the equipment part of it. I like kind of the challenge of figuring out like, "Oh, how am I going to move this liquid over here without exposing it to oxygen or air?" And like that was just a really cool challenge for me.
Paolo 03:05
It's really interesting. It's being conscious of what you're handling is quite important. So, you've been
Monte Helm, PhD 03:12
It is.
Paolo 03:13
You've been doing that for all your career at the end of the day, right?
Monte Helm, PhD 03:15
Yeah.
Paolo 03:16
To this day, you're still handling that type of chemistry.
Monte Helm, PhD 03:18
Yeah. And that was, you know, I think, at that point, you know, working with that borane chemistry kind of made me fall in love with the main group elements more than anything. I'm like, boy, I'm not an organic chemist, because I think carbon and hydrogen only is just kind of boring. But I really love this idea of these other elements that kind of behave similar to carbon, but slightly different bonding properties and just that exploration of kind of the new families of bonding was really fascinating to me.
Paolo 03:46
Interesting. And so what did you get from there so, how did it work?
Monte Helm, PhD 03:51
I really enjoyed doing research so much and I had such a great mentor. At that time. I was kind of starting to suspect I might like to be a professor, but I wasn't sure what level, so the only sort of career path was to get a PhD. So, went to the University of Colorado - Boulder, and worked for another fantastic mentor Arlie Norman, synthesis of phosphazane. So, as phosphorus nitrogen single bond compounds and we made cyclic compounds was kind of the main idea. I really love working in the lab. I love my mentor and my lab mates and just a really great time in graduate school.
Paolo 04:27
I know phosphazenes, but I really don't know what they are used to and what was the interest around them. Can you tell me a little bit more about it?
Monte Helm, PhD 04:34
So, phosphazenes, the phosphorus nitrogen double bond compounds, have been used as fire retardants and to establish some plastics. We were looking at phosphazanes, so single bond phosphorus nitrogens, and each phosphorous atom would have a chiral center. So, we were actually looking at forming chiral polymers. So, we'll get their nonlinear optical properties, things like that.
Paolo 04:55
So, you completed your PhD program on that?
Monte Helm, PhD 05:00
At that point, I was really interested in going into undergraduate teaching and research. I just felt like I really enjoy communicating science. So, through graduate school, I did the TA thing. And I did enjoy connecting with students. And I felt like I had a knack for teaching, explaining chemistry,
Paolo 05:19
You're on a podcast right now. So, you know, still communicating.
Monte Helm, PhD 05:22
Right? Good point. So, Arlie, my boss, you know, I told him, this was what my plan was. And he said, "You know, that's great. But it's always easy to step down." He's like, "Why don't you shoot higher, like, go do a research postdoc, get yourself set up to really do some, you know, your own research program, do that first and then decide, you know, you can take that experience with you to an undergraduate if you want, rather than just jumping right into an undergraduate program." And so that seemed like great advice. But I think he knew me well enough that I didn't want to do something just kind of normal. So, he had a connection in, in England with this guy, Professor John Nixon, at the University of Sussex, and he was doing some of the very first work with phosphorus carbon double and triple bonds. And so just kind of that preliminary, like fundamental discovery, and he's like, "You're going to love living in England, you're going to love this chemistry, you should go do this." And so, really lucky I connected with Dr. Nixon, and got hired as a postdoc to go over and spend the year overseas and do the research there.
Paolo 06:26
What year was that?
Monte Helm, PhD 06:27
That was 2000, 2001.
Paolo 06:29
England, England looks the same, I think, more or less.
Monte Helm, PhD 06:32
It well, actually, you know, so I just got back from a sabbatical in the exact same lab. And the lab has not been remodeled. My initials are still scratched in the bench on the top from 20 years ago.
Paolo 06:44
That's good. You left a legacy, which is still there.
Monte Helm, PhD 06:46
Yep. That's exactly right.
Paolo 06:47
It's amazing. That's amazing, great stuff. After your postdoc, then what happened?
Monte Helm, PhD 06:53
So, two things happened at that postdoc. The first one was, it was the first time in my career where I really wasn't involved with teaching, I wasn't being a TA, I wasn't, you know, helping out with any tutoring or any classes, and probably six, seven months into it, I really missed that interaction. And I started, you know, honestly, kind of getting lonely just going into the lab and working in front of the hood. And then like I missed, you know, like that, that deeper interaction of teaching and learning. Secondly, the research that I had been learning and working on there really led me into my own research ideas. It was kind of the last, another piece of the puzzle that I put together with the borane chemistry, I was doing an undergrad, the phosphazane chemistry from grad school, and now, the phosphorus, carbon, double-bond, triple-bond chemistry, the reactive species they were using, just all of a sudden all clicked and like, "Oh, I have an idea. I think we could make these crown phosphine compounds, like the nitrogen, the aza-crowns, and they'd be great for bonding transition metals." And, of course, my first thought was, somebody has to have done this already, you know, gotten the literature and there was very, very little that was done. And then I thought I had a decent idea. And so that was kind of, I think, maybe the point where I really gained some confidence that I might be able to write my own proposals and get some funding to run my own research program. One thing that I struggled with, and it's been a struggle throughout my whole career is, I really like the fundamental aspect of discovery. I like just kind of doing the research to see if we can make a new compound to make a new type of bond and learn what those properties are. And it seems like as I've gone along, in my career, without having a hard application that you can sell in a grant, it was just got increasingly harder to get funding for that kind of fundamental idea of I just want to discover science. Or I was never really good at articulating why it was going to be important was also.
Paolo 08:45
Have you got to, you know, more applied sort of areas of your research at some point?
Monte Helm, PhD 08:49
Not actually to the point of publication, you know, so at Fort Lewis, one of the targets was to get a nine-member, three phosphorus crown compound, and I was really kind of just hitting the ground running, sort of published a paper in Inorganic Chemistry, probably 2004 or 2005, sort of three or four years after I started my career, independent career at Fort Lewis. And then that was where then I went, and it was time to go on sabbatical. It wasn't time, I had the opportunity to go on sabbatical. And so I reached out to an old colleague from University of Colorado-Boulder, Dan DuBois. And they had just started a new center, Energy Research Frontier Center at Pacific Northwest National Lab. And I said, "Hey, I'm looking to do sabbatical." And they said, "Great, we've got funding to bring people on to do exactly that. And we need someone that can do phosphine ligand synthesis." So, it was just that that match made in heaven that I was able to go there and do the sabbatical that really focused on my expertise of phosphine ligand synthesis.
Monte Helm, PhD 08:49
How do you develop this idea? How did he come up to you that you, "I want to do a sabbatical?" And how does it work from the funding and salary perspective, you know?
Monte Helm, PhD 09:19
First, I have to give credit to, I did a second postdoc after the University of Sussex at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga. And so, as I was kind of wrapping up that postdoc at the University of Sussex, I did a couple of interviews for academic positions. And after flying across the ocean for 12 hours, I just realized that this was not going to be easy to do to go right into a job. So, I started looking for post, another postdoc to do to kind of bring me back to the States. And there was a newer program called the Dreyfus program that actually undergraduate professors could write proposals to and there, that grant was geared towards a young person starting off in their career, to go to an undergraduate institution, do part-time research and part-time teaching to give them that experience at an undergraduate institution on how do you balance those things. And I worked with a gentleman, Greg Grant. And he was doing thio crown work, so tied right in with what I wanted to do. So, I got all sorts of experience looking at thio crown chemistry, and he was a fantastic mentor who had taken advantage of sabbaticals. And one of the things he told me as I was moving off to my independent career, he said, "One of the biggest, you know, I think, things that's benefited me most is taking a sabbatical." He's like "Monte, always take a sabbatical as soon as you possibly can. And don't let anyone tell you that, oh, you have to be chair first or put it off a year." He's like, "you take your sabbatical. It's the best perk of this job." So, I took him seriously. I was like, "Alright, I'm going to do that."
Paolo 11:28
How did you find it? Did you miss teaching again?
Monte Helm, PhD 11:30
Yeah. I did. So, it's funny that you said that. So yeah, during that first year, I did some fantastic science, you know, Dan DuBois, Morris Bullock, it was a real team effort. And those guys were just such fantastic scientists and to be involved with that group was amazing there were four or five really talented postdocs that were brought in. And so, it was all people that were kind of starting and working on the same project together, it was some of the best science I've ever been involved with in my life. It was really special. But again, kind of by sort of seven, eight months in, I really was missing that student teaching part of it. And I asked Morris and Dan, I'm like, "Hey, could I like recruit some students from Fort Lewis to come work with me the last three months of my sabbatical?" And they were like, "Yeah, great." So, I actually was able to bring a couple students in from Fort Lewis up to the National Lab and show them how I was doing research, showed them the team science looked like. And yeah, so it was really kind of a nice cap to that sabbatical experience. Fort Lewis was kind of my dream job. I really wanted to be a professor, I wanted to teach undergraduates. And after I got back from my sabbatical, I was really excited about teaching, got back in and, you know, got a call from the National Lab, and they said, "Hey, we really loved having you here, would you consider coming back full time?" And it was, that was a really agonizing decision, because I loved Fort Lewis, and I loved my job, and I loved my research program. But this was just such cutting-edge science and I just kind of felt that sort of same thing back from grad school, it's really hard to take a step up. And this was a step up into some really great cutting-edge science. And I thought, "I'm never going to have an opportunity like this, again, I should take advantage of it." So, took that leap and went to the National Lab. And part of it, the role, I was deputy director of the program. And so, I was overseeing a number of postdocs. So, I was trying to pull in that element of teaching just at a higher level with postdoctoral level. And so yeah, I made that jump just to kind of to push myself.
Paolo 13:30
Is it easier to do research, you know, in a bigger institution, you know, with access to, you know, better facilities or whatever resources?
Monte Helm, PhD 13:40
It varies. I think some schools do it really well, like Fort Lewis College had a very strong commitment to doing undergraduate research, the administration supported it. And so not only could I apply for external funding, there was internal funding to keep me going. Lots of good support in the department also. The students were really involved. And so, there's kind of an expectation that students want, if you came to Fort Lewis for chemistry, you wanted to do undergraduate research. So, I had kind of a nice pool of undergraduates that wanted to do that. I think other four-year schools aren't set up to do that as well.
Paolo 14:12
Yeah, you can see that would be tricky. What about the difference between working with undergraduate students and working with you know a postdoc? It's a different level of skills, right? It makes things a bit easier?
Monte Helm, PhD 14:24
Yeah. And that I think was one of the challenges that I enjoyed and struggled with at Fort Lewis. You get a student that would be really interested, kind of by the time he got them trained, and they were really starting to make progress, they were ready to go on to the next thing, which was great. That was the whole point. But it was very bits of progress, and rather than having a postdoc that you can set loose in the lab.
Paolo 14:48
Did you feel the pressure of sort of having to provide a sort of higher level of challenge or a higher level of mentorship to somebody who is already trained? You know more for, it's a higher-level leadership in some ways that you need to work on?
Monte Helm, PhD 15:03
Yeah. It is. One of the things I enjoyed was I could go in the lab and be doing the research, and the students would be learning from me doing it. And that was part of what I enjoyed. Because I still like being in the lab, I like mixing chemicals, I like being in front of the hood. You know, but when you're teaching a higher level, like I think Arlie Norman, my graduate advisor, I would go talk to him in his office, you know, and he said, "Okay, go do this reaction." And, you know, I was never that person that wanted to just kind of be that higher level person to tell you to go do stuff. I wanted to be in there, hands on with you. So, that was, I think, part of what at the end, one of the reasons why I left the National Lab is, as you know, a person that was supervising people as Deputy Director, you know that as you're there longer, you go to more and more meetings, there's less and less time to talk about science. And kind of by the end, I thought, like, wow, this is really taking me a long way away from both teaching and hands on work that I wanted to be doing. At that time, we had had our first son, and we were a long way from family. So, we decided, hey, let's, let's look to moving back closer to family. And so for the first time, we decided to move somewhere before rather than I had always moved somewhere for a job. And so, you know, I'd followed the job wherever it went. And this was the first time where we decided, let's go move to Kansas City, be close to family, and I'll look for a job there.
Paolo 16:24
We hope you're enjoying this episode of Bringing Chemistry to Life. I steal 30 seconds from your listening for a reminder and a request. If you work in a research laboratory, you probably use Alfa Aesar and Acros Organics chemicals at some point, please remember that you can still find them all, under the new Thermo Scientific Chemicals brand on thermofisher.com, or from your preferred distributor. And this is the request. If you like this podcast, why don't you share it with a friend or a colleague. Let's share the love for science. And now back to our conversation.
Monte Helm, PhD 17:02
So, I applied for a number of different academic positions here because I knew I really wanted to get back into the teaching and got really lucky that the community college here, Metropolitan Community College at Longview, was looking to hire a chemist and I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I hadn't ever had any experience with community college before. I can say that I was the most pleasantly surprised as I've ever been, learning about a new institution or a career. I absolutely love teaching here at the community college in a way that I had never had at any other place I'd been.
Paolo 17:37
Why is that?
Monte Helm, PhD 17:38
First of all, one thing that is really nice is they do want me to just focus on teaching. They said, "You are a teacher".
Paolo 17:45
You're not doing any research.
Monte Helm, PhD 17:46
We don't want you to, right, you're not doing any research. And that was part of what the understanding was coming here was. We want you to do teaching, we want you to focus on teaching, we want you to be an innovator. And so, I my department chair like the first week, he was like "My job is make sure you don't have to do any paperwork." I'm like, "I love this job. This is great. "Yeah, what time do you want to teach your classes? What do you think will work best for the students?” Like, boy, I get to pick that. Yeah. So, they, like it was really nice to kind of have that freedom to be, to design a teaching class and do it in a way with complete freedom that I think is best and to not have those distractions with having to write grants, having to write funding and having to go to meetings, was just so much more fulfilling at this stage in my career. But I think also part of it was because I had that really good research experience, both at the national lab and from an undergraduate institution.
Paolo 18:39
Do you miss the research element in your, sort of, daily routine?
Monte Helm, PhD 18:44
Yeah, you know, I do I still think about those crown, crown phosphines that I was working on. And there's some unfinished, you know, threads there that I just really love to pick up someday. So yeah, it's, it's on the back of my mind, I do miss it.
Paolo 19:00
Do you work on kind of at list in your mind into what your research will be for your next opportunity to go for a sabbatical? How does it work? You know, is it an interruption? Is it like in chunks? Or is there still a continuity in your research work?
Monte Helm, PhD 19:14
Yeah, you know, I'm lucky in that I've been able to kind of follow the trend of what I'm interested in. You know, we have our kids now are 8 and 14. And when I was starting to think about a sabbatical, I was like, "Well, I'd really like to go overseas and be able to take them and give them that travel experience and show them what it's like to experience different cultures more than just a weekend vacation or a trip." And so, I thought, "Well, I haven't like checked in on John Nixon for a long time. So, I'll just pop on to the University of Sussex website, just kind of feeling out, like, oh, maybe there's something there and maybe he's got something going on." And I got to the website and see that he had recently retired, but they had hired a young professor Ian Crosley that sort of picked up the threads of his research and were going "Oh, well, I'll just drop him in an email and just say to introduce myself and see if, you know, there's got anything interesting." Say, “I'm kind of feeling out a sabbatical.” And he got back to me within, I think, 24 hours. He's like, "Yeah, I know your work from when you're here with John. I'm just getting, you know, my research program, you know, is really starting to get some momentum, we'd love to have you come and sponsor you in the lab." And yeah, that was. So, that was kind of the start. And that was right pre-COVID. So then, yeah, right? So, then COVID hit, and we weren't quite sure if it was going to work, because, you know, it was about two years beforehand. And we're like, well, everything's shut down. People weren't traveling. But then kind of as that that COVID year started to end we kind of realized, like, this is going to work, we're going to be able to get out there. Which worked out really well for him because the the research, you know, programs in general, really, the productivity went down for those couple of years, because the students just weren't in the lab. And so it really worked out well, because he, of course, being a professor had to focus on grant writing, teaching, papers, but I was able to get in the lab and be the person that was in there, like helping get things going, and the research moving and really helping out like kind of firing up that research program again, to help get the momentum going. So, yeah, it ended up being a great chance for me to mentor students in the lab again, which I really enjoyed.
Paolo 21:18
Was your research still, obviously, it was still similar subjects. Right? It was still working on the phosphors and.
Monte Helm, PhD 21:24
Yeah, so Dr. Crosley had taken phosphorus carbon triple bonds, and he was working on hooking them to metals for making single-molecule wires.
Paolo 21:32
Oh, nice. Molecular wires.
Monte Helm, PhD 21:34
Yep. And then, kind of in conjunction in Lab 14 was Richard Layfield and they were working on single molecule magnets. So, it's kind of the electronic materials idea there was really cool. We got the wires connected single molecule magnets to
Paolo 21:48
Is it polymeric chemistry?
Monte Helm, PhD 21:49
Very cool stuff.
Paolo 21:50
Like a bit. Nice.
Monte Helm, PhD 21:52
Yep. But we were working on just making the synthetic units that would eventually become this.
Paolo 21:56
Of course, that's interesting. Is there any real-life application? And everybody asked these questions, but.
Monte Helm, PhD 22:01
Yeah, I think promise definitely, you know, the, as we're getting smaller, smaller with our electronics, lithography can only go so far down, you know, in the nanometer scale. And so eventually, we're going to have to start building up and this is kind of the foundation on how do we build from molecules up to build these electronic devices, rather than starting going top down and carving the amount of silicon.
Paolo 22:24
Is there a future for organic, well it's not proper organic molecules. Right. But, uh, you know, for, for non-silicon molecules in the electronic. Is this the way, the way it might go?
Monte Helm, PhD 22:35
Yeah, that's, that is an excellent question. And I think that's one of the things that like, I've liked about kind of the fundamental science aspect. I don't know that we know the answer that question. There may be, you know, I think maybe as I've gotten in my career, too, I don't think just like, “Oh, yeah, it's possible, I think, is it cost effective?” And then so then you start balancing those things like, yeah, I definitely think that there's some great alternatives out there probably with better properties than silicon that could be used for devices. But you know, we do have the silicone that's available, and it's cheap. And we've got the procedures down. And so, we might have a solution. But I don't know if there's a need yet for it.
Paolo 23:11
Yes. But that's what fundamental research is, right?
Monte Helm, PhD 23:14
Yes. That is exactly right. Yep. Isn't that sad. That's, I had trouble communicating that part of it. I'm like, “Why is it important that you do fundamental research,” like, “Well, because it's cool.” No, I can't quite articulate it. Right. But I think you nailed it there.
Paolo 23:27
Do you think research at the level that you have done for most of your career in more sort of undergraduate institutions more set for you and without the need for big funding is the way to go? Do you think there's a lot, a lot of the good sort of fundamental things are now coming up from these types of research?
Monte Helm, PhD 23:47
Yeah, you know, I think that one thing I've learned from being at the community college also is that I think that institutions should be trying to be good at one thing. And it's when they when they do too much, it puts too much pressure on both the students and the faculty. So here, I think this is the best teaching I've ever done in my life. But it's because they've asked me to focus on teaching, you know, I think if you want to have an undergraduate school, for your school, where you're teaching college students how to do research, that should be the focus, and you should still have strong teaching. But the resources should go towards, that's the aspect, I want to be a researcher, I want to get that experience as an undergraduate, I'm going to go to this college because that's what they're specializing in. Because I think what happens as the funding gets real diverse, and so then you have a lot of institutions that are kind of doing okay, but none that can really excel.
Paolo 24:38
I think there's a number of, you know, example of incredible figures there with pushing, pushing the boundaries of the science, you know, and being very inspirational to the students. But it's really hard to be inspirational where you're teaching, you know, general chemistry one, you know. How is the profession evolving? How is it that you're kind of pushing the boundaries?
Monte Helm, PhD 25:07
One thing that the sabbatical did for me was really allowed me to step back, especially after COVID, because it impacted us so much like going to teaching remotely. You know, we did a semester where there are no labs, and how do you teach students about chemistry without doing the labs. And so it really changed the way I approach teaching more than ever, especially after I had time to think about it. And I, pre-COVID, just serendipitously had a set of class recordings, because I had a student that had a hearing disability, and they asked if they could record all my lectures. And the community college here provided a service where they would record my lectures, and they transcribe them into text and so I had this really great set of lecture videos. And after the first semester of teaching remote, on COVID, I thought, well, this is stupid. They're just watching me on a screen talk about the same lectures that I have as a video recording. So, why wouldn't I just have them watch the recording beforehand, and then interact with them in a way with the material rather than lecturing. And so, you know, I enjoyed that because it for me, it was a different aspect of connecting with students, rather than just being in front of the classroom and being in lecture and trying to get them excited to study on their own. They could watch that outside and then come to class excited to work on the problems and work and learn more about chemistry kind of the hands-on part. And so that that sabbatical break really helped me solidify the fact that, yeah, teaching isn't about anymore, necessarily giving the students the information, because all that information is out there. And they can get it. It's more about showing them how to be interactive with it, and how it's relevant to their lives and how they can work hard and learn something and really further themselves. And I think the community college, I get students that haven't had strong science backgrounds, and they just find that so valuable to come in, have someone that's passionate about science, show them why they're excited about it.
Paolo 27:01
So, what really takes you out of bed in the morning? Is it this idea of making doing something special for your students? Or is the curiosity for how you approach work? You seem really curious about you know, experiment with whatever you're doing.
Monte Helm, PhD 27:19
Yeah, I think it's changed. You know, as I've gone through my career, my motivation, and definitely when I was starting off my independent career at Fort Lewis, I really wanted to make those crown phosphenes. And I was really driven to see if my idea would work. And it was, and the undergraduates are, again, a great way for me to help accomplish that goal. And I never really saw myself as doing, you know, that that that high level research, like I said, going out and getting those fundings, the R1 research. But then the opportunity at PNNL kind of changed that for me. I thought, wow, like, the skills that I have is a pretty unique set, and they are applicable at this different level of science. And so all of a sudden, I got kind of motivated, say, like, “Oh, what can I accomplish? What is, has my background led me to that I can use to further a research program.” And that was on renewable energy. And at the time, I thought that was a really great way to see how I could apply my synthetic knowledge on something that was more applicable. How do we store wind and solar energy, you know, through chemical means. And I'm like, this is great. This is, the one thing I didn't have in my career before was, what's the application of being able to do this synthesis. So, then that was the National Lab. And then coming here, I would say, I'm experienced, I am exposed to a different level of students. We have a lot of students that come from poor socioeconomic backgrounds, inner Kansas City, have not had good high school experiences. And it's the most diverse classes I've ever taught, the most challenging and the most rewarding because of it. And so, I feel like I'm, you know, today I get up and I'm just excited to go and see what students I can really impact. And they're so, I have to say, I have to get the best students because they're so grateful that they have, you know, someone that cares about them and wants to teach them science when their experience hasn't necessarily been that.
Paolo 29:12
Yeah, and you never know, life is full of these moments, right. Yeah. And, you know, and as we get to the, you know, to closing our chat, which has been really, really interesting today, I will say, you know, there's that there's my standard final question. I always go with close my interviews with the same, what piece of advice would you give to somebody who's younger and just starting in their career?
Monte Helm, PhD 29:35
Yeah, you know I, of course listened to the podcasts and knew this question was coming. Boy, just been really struggling with it for the last few days because it's almost hard to pick, like to sort of narrow it down to one thing. And part of what I've learned to, I guess, even from this last sabbatical and interacting with the graduate students and the postdocs is that, although the chemistry is as a science is growing, it's still got sort of the same foundation as the periodic table. But how you approach doing it really evolves over time. And I went into my career thinking, I want to be a professor at an undergraduate school that does research and I never saw myself doing anything else. And opening up my career path to other possibilities has been just one of the best things for me because it's really kept me passionate about science in a way that I wasn't expecting. So, I guess maybe I could sum it down to just be prepared to be flexible with your career and follow what you think you'll be passionate about.
Paolo 30:53
That was Dr. Monte Helm, professor of chemistry at Metropolitan Community College in Kansas City. If you enjoyed this conversation, you're sure to enjoy Dr. Helm's book, video, podcast, and other content recommendations. Look in the Episode Notes for a URL where you can access these recommendations and register for a free Bringing Chemistry to Life t-shirt. And if you haven't yet this season, please consider leaving us a positive rating or review wherever you listen to your podcast. We always appreciate the kind words and feedback on our work. This episode was produced by Sarah Briganti, Matt Ferris, and Matthew Stock.