If variety is the spice of life, Dr. Matthew Laubacher’s career is full of flavor.
As an educator, his experience spans over 20 years, with his first teaching role kicking off in 2003. His personal academic ventures were an eclectic mix of majors, earning several degrees in subjects from history to animal physiology and neuroscience.
Now, Dr. Laubacher sits as the chair of the UAGC General Education social science courses and works as a professor of American History and Introduction to Social Science. He uses his background to fuel research topics that interest him and has garnered extensive experience to execute that research.
Exploring History Through Travel
Although he began his undergraduate career as a biology major, Dr. Laubacher quickly realized that working in the biotech industry wasn’t the right fit for him. However, picking up a double major in history was a fortuitous move, as it allowed him to align his interests.
“I was able to combine my interests in both history and biology into studying the history of natural history,” he says.
Throughout his career, Dr. Laubacher has taken a number of research trips around the world, including to some very faraway destinations. During his undergrad studies at the University of California San Diego, he worked at a lab at Scripps Institute of Oceanography that did research in Antarctica and even had the chance to visit the Antarctic Peninsula.
“My job was to sort through a bunch of marine birds, and classify them, and take their mass,” he recalls. “That was a lot of fun.”
He also studied abroad in Germany and England. Since most of his research specifically focuses on American natural history, Dr. Laubacher now mainly travels to domestic locations, where he explores museums and archives that pertain to his research.
“Wherever there's a big natural history museum, I've probably done a fair amount of research there or at institutions like it,” says Dr. Laubacher. “I've done research trips to Berkeley. I had grants to do research in Chicago, New York, during my dissertation studies, I spent a fair amount of time in both Philadelphia and Washington, DC.”
This year he plans to travel to Mexico, where he’ll be presenting in the annual conference for History of Science Society in Merida, Mexico in the state of Yucatán.
Current Research Endeavors
At present, Dr. Laubacher’s research falls into distinct categories pertaining to two books he’s developing. For his dissertation, he focuses on “the importance of institutional culture with regards to the development of natural knowledge” and describes this area of study as the analysis of human relationships.
His other project is following the unconventional researcher Edmund Heller, whose works have appeared in a variety of disciplines that have caught Dr. Laubacher’s attention.
“He was a really interesting guy in a lot of ways,” says Dr. Laubacher. “There's this weird overlap where he's just everywhere, all throughout the period of time that I study, and as a result of it, he ends up in a lot of stuff I do.”
That curiosity has led to an investigation of Edmund Heller’s work, as it appears in some unlikely places. Most researchers appear inside their chosen jurisdiction of study, but Dr. Laubacher notes that Heller doesn’t follow that rule.
“One of his field notebooks is in the University of California San Diego Special Collections, when he didn’t even work at the University of California San Diego because it did not exist yet,” he explains.
Despite Heller’s reputation, Dr. Laubacher is still curious about the mark left behind by this elusive researcher.
“No one's done an exhaustive or even a full-on study of this guy,” Dr. Laubacher says. “The good news is, I've been to lots of places where he's worked. The bad news is that I need to put it all together. So that's my goal, to try and turn that around.”
Through his extensive findings, Dr. Laubacher notes that compiling data and organizing it in an effective manner is the bulk of his work scope, as an area he’s currently tackling for his long-form studies and research projects.
“I'm still in the process of going through and utilizing that data in a lot of different forms of publications or presentations,” he says. “I think I've done the research I need to do, like primary source-wise, archival stuff, and so it's just a matter of putting everything together at this particular point in time.”
Full Circle with UAGC
An emphasis on community is a huge touchstone for Dr. Laubacher. Fostering community started when Dr. Laubacher was a high school science teacher for five years. At the start of his higher education career nearly 15 years ago, he played a pivotal role in helping the University maintain regular quality assurance in accreditation evaluations and has built a solid professional foundation since. He has earned several grants over the course of his career and received fellowships from prestigious organizations like the Smithsonian. At present, he is involved with a variety of internal programs, like co-leading a faculty group that is working on unification with the University of Arizona regarding faculty policy, and he is a member of the University Promotion Advisory Committee for UAGC.
“The most formative and important stuff I've done has been focusing on students, focusing on program development, focusing on larger, big picture items for the institution,” he explains.
He’s also proud of the affiliations he’s made with the faculty at UAGC.
“It's really been great to work and collaborate with the people I've had an opportunity to do so with, to work on things that really helped shape students' lives,” he adds.
In terms of the connectivity of students to their academics, he advises others to take advantage of every step in their respective journeys.
“Part of being a student is embracing opportunities and really looking into it and trying to ask questions and learn even informally — through questions, through emails — in addition to the class. So, embrace the process,” he advises.
Dr. Laubacher’s extensive experience in education has also taught him the importance of time management — a skill he recommends students master. Ultimately, capitalizing on available resources provides students with enormous benefits.
“I think that there's a lot of awesome opportunities here at UAGC to really explore,” he says.