Transforming learning through innovation and collaboration

In Neena Grover’s very first nucleic acid course, the students needed to learn about HIV. To bring the subject to life, she had the class volunteer at the Southern Colorado AIDS Project. There, the students met people affected by the virus and saw what it means to live with, and sometimes die from, AIDS.

“Students want to learn in ways that connect what they're learning to something meaningful,” Grover said. “That’s the hook of this type of learning.”

Neena Grover

Starting with that first class, she has used innovative approaches in her classroom, combining discussions, research, problem-based learning and service learning.

Grover discovered her love for teaching and education during her postdoc when she taught organic biochemistry for the first time. Despite being told by others that teaching was a waste of time, she quickly realized she had been misinformed.

“The students were so enthusiastic and willing to learn,” Grover said. “I realized that we don't take education seriously. We think it is something beneath us.

“That moment changed me. I thought I'd make more contributions to education than I would ever make to RNA.”

Grover is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Colorado College and the recipient of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’s 2025 William C. Rose Award for Exemplary Contributions to Education.

Grover has been an ASBMB member for more than 20 years, during which time she has shown her a strong commitment to education. She has served on the Education and Professional Development Committee, helped establish the first ASBMB student chapters and led national ASBMB sessions on diversity, inclusion and antiracist practices.

In their nomination letter, Murphy Brasuel and Marilee Benore wrote that Grover “instills learning that stays with students. Alumni remark about their growth into competent and confident researchers and professionals and actively point to Neena’s classes as a catalyst.”

“Science does not exist in a vacuum in a lab,” Grover said. “It exists in the discipline as the problems the society needs to solve or the conversations that society needs to have. Science must engage with the society in meaningful ways.”