A Day in the Life: Dr. Rossi Marx

A day in the life of Dr. Rossi Marx often ends on the 11:30 p.m. bus out of Ring Road. “I’m not a nine-to-fiver,” says Marx, senior laboratory instructor and sessional lecturer in the department of biology.

Marx, a neurobiologist, is passionate about fostering a learning environment for students. With undergraduate degrees in mathematics and biology from Germany, an MSc in neurobiology from the University of Saskachewan, and a PhD in neurobiology from UVic, Marx is no stranger to going the extra mile for the love of teaching and learning.

“Throughout my career, I always had to fight to be allowed to get my education,” says Marx. “As a pupil in high school, I was told by a teacher that girls did not need to know science, since they were going to get married. Just before graduating from high school, my father was diagnosed with leukemia, and he died a few months later when I was in my first term of university. I was told by a relative that I couldn’t and shouldn’t stay in university. But look at me now: I am a continent away, not only in science, but teaching it, and rather than discouraging, I try to encourage students. And it has been wonderfully rewarding.”

As a senior lab instructor, Marx develops and coordinates first-year general biology labs and third-year ichthyology, animal behavior and chordates labs. As a sessional lecturer, Marx teaches fourth-year neuroethology and third-year animal behavior. On top of her job at UVic, Marx is the chair of the Vancouver Island Regional Science Fair, which is held at and supported by UVic. According to Marx, the need for people in the science and technology sector is increasing. “The kids who participate in the science fair are the people who are going to take care of all of us in our old age,” she says. “They are the people who are going to come up with the next CanadaArm.”

The diversity of her roles doesn’t faze Marx.

“Above all, I am an instructor,” she says. “I try to give students the skills that go beyond book knowledge that they need for their professional lives. For me, the most important skill is critical thinking.” 

Sometimes, says Marx, critical thinking happens right before your eyes.

“I swear I’ve seen the light bulb go on. And there’s nothing in the world like it. Imagine a student who comes in and she’s upset—she knows she’s not getting it. You ask leading questions and you build that confidence—I have literally seen it: the eyes go out—there’s the light bulb—and pling! You see it. It makes you float for the remainder of the day, I swear.”

Marx’s lab abounds with glowing tanks and undulating, gelatinous beings. She studies jellyfish, and her enthusiasm for the creatures is infectious.

For Marx, jellyfish are exciting because their ancestors were the first animals to have a full nervous system. “Evolutionarily speaking, the group goes back almost a billion years,” says Marx. “If we look at the fossil records and compare these ancestors to animals that are around today, we find that the forms are very similar. And if we can assume that form and function go hand in hand, and we observe that nerve cells in jellyfish and in humans function in similar ways—how humbling is that? How interesting is that?”

Making connections—from invertibrates to humans, between instructors and students—at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.