Dr. Hugh Notman on Biological Anthropology and Teaching
*Interview conducted August 25, 2017.*
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is your name and position?
Dr. Hugh Notman: Hugh Notman, I am associate professor in biological anthropology as well as the associate dean of learning technologies in the faculty of humanities and social sciences.
Jacobsen: How did you find AU? Why did you choose it?
Notman: AU found me if I am honest. 11 years ago, I was looking for a faculty position. I just finished a post-doc. I came across an advertisement for biological athropologists, which landed in my lap and was very fortuitous. I livedin Alberta, had my first child, and was wondering how I would feed it. I saw this position. It was in Alberta. It was great. If I am honest, I really had not heard of Athabasca before that. I am not a native Albertan, so I didn’t grow up here. But I did my Ph.D. here. So, I was in Alberta for the five years. I did that. But during that time, I had not come across the name. So, to me, it was almost a risk. I just thought, “Okay, I’ll do it.” I didn’t know about it. This was in the mid-2000s.
Jacobsen: With regards to your research in biological anthropology, what are your main research questions?
Notman: My area is primatology. I study primate communication and cognition, and just generally ecology and behaviour. I’ve worked with chimpanzees in Uganda, studying communication in little monkeys in South Africa, and Spider and Howler monkeys in belize. So,the Africa stuff is morecommunication and cognition. I am really interested in questions of “what are the kinds of things animals communicate?” Is it like language? Does this relate to the origin of language in humans? Are there any actual parallels in the sense that can we find the roots of aspects of human language? Or are they qualitatively different?
Jacobsen: It’s a broad field. If you take other primatologists like Frans De Waal or biological anthropologists like Helen Fisher or linguists like Noam Chomsky, the field has broad applications. What, from your decade of AU experience, draws students to the discipline?
Notman: Most of my students so far seem to be interested in the individual courses. So, I try to make the course as reflective of my own interests. We have base junior level courses on primate behaviour, human evolution. The ones I have added in are more to do with what I think are interesting topics for students regarding human evolutionary biology and then I just opened a course in primate cognition, which includes some of these topics. The discipline, most of what our courses in anthropology are right now. I would say the majority are socio-cultural and archaeology. Then there’s just an attempt to grow the biology subfield.
Jacobsen: What tasks and responsibilities come with being a professor at AU?
Notman: Any of the other ones that come with any other universities. You have your commitment to teaching and course development, and research, and then administrative service as well. The difference, I guess with teaching and course development at AU… I also teach at U of C as a sessional. There you make the classes for the night or that class. It is actually easier to do that than to get up in front of 400 people and wing it based off your notes then it is from notes students need to learn on their own. I would say that is a unique challenge for teachers at AU. It took a little while to get used to that.
Jacobsen: For students interested in getting the degree in biological anthropology at AU, what are your tips for them doing in the course of studies as well as outside of that in getting a position, getting a job of some form that would be relevant to the courses and degree that they’ve selected?
Notman: Currently, it is just a degree in anthropology generally. So doing well in their courses, like any course, anything biology or social sciences — read, read, and read, write, write, and write. That is the key to success in the social sciences. To do that, you have to be passionate and interested in whatever yuou are learning about. If you are interested in pursuing something biological or biological anthropology related, that is a huge subfield in anthropology or subdiscipline I should say. Bio-anth can include forensics. Forensic anthropology has a nice practical application. You can do CSI stuff. That draws a lot of students who dig up bones and stones. There are things like human genetics and migration patterns. Primatology is almost an outlier. What we do is almost more like biology, it is a historical legacy that we’re in an anthropology department at all. Fun fact, in the States and Europe, it is starting to change. You can find more biology in the anthropology disciplines. That’s kind of a thing if people are interested in that kind of work. Usually, you have to go on to do graduate work and postgraduate work. There are lots of other options. I would encourage them to contact me if that is what they are interested in.
Jacobsen: What are some of the plans or directions of initiatives for the next 5 years for biological anthropology in terms of growth, for instance, with programs and student enrollment at AU?
Notman: We talk about the growth of the anthropology program more generally rather than biological anthropology. I am just the biological anthropologist. I am responsible for the bio-anth course offerings. It is not a specialty within our programs that you could necessarily specialize in. We’ve had, myself and an archaeologist and a sociocultural anthropologist (who is going to retire, probably, in a year)… the big transition will be when we replace that person in a year, what their area of specialization will be. So, no real current plans. One thing that myself and the archaeologist, both of us run field schools actually in Belize. But at the moment, they are not AU field schools. They are run through the group studies programs at the University of Calgary. But they are open to all students. They don’t have to be a U of C student. So, technically, we could have an AU student on them. We haven’t so far, but this is something both the arhcaeologist and myself would like to try and really push that more at Athabasca to get Athabasca students involved. She runs an archaeology field school in Belize looking at Mayan sites. I am the primatology field school there. That’s the area where I think we’re excited about making forays and drawing more AU students. Again, they would be coming as visiting students to the University of Calgary, but there is a very simple mechanism for that.
Jacobsen: What about graduate school for students? What should they do in terms of getting in research?
Notman: If you are interested in graduate research, then you should decide what you are interested in. Whenever you apply to a potential graduate supervisor sending an email saying, “I would like to do graduate research at your school. I would like to do a masters.” You say, “I have an interest in this. I have done my research. My research interests align with yours. I see you work with these species on this subject or in these areas. This is what I would like to do.” It doesn’t mean you’re going to do that.Your supervisor may have his or her own ideas. At least, it shows that you have done your homework. That you, actually, have similar interests and a potential supervisor is much more likely to consider hast application or that request more seriously than a cold call out of the blue, “I love monkeys. I’d love to work with you.”
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Notman: Do your homework and have an area that you are actually interested in and should align somewhat with what the potential supervisor does. That’s the main consideration.
Jacobsen: Any final thoughts?
Notman: Just do it. People think, “If I do a degree, does this mean I have to end up working with monkeys?” No, it doesn’t. You can do whatever you want. If you want to do a graduate degree in something that seems to not have as much application like something like anthropology, you learn very crucial skills in any of the social sciences, like how to research, how to communicate, how to write which is a vanishing skill, and these are things that, I think, are very important skills to have in any profession.
Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Hugh.
