Joseph F. Clark, Ph.D.

Michigan State is a huge university. The laboratories for my research were in two different buildings and they were about a mile apart. When the weather was nice, I would skateboard. One building was in the clinical center, where a lot of the doctors’ offices were, and the other building was the Department of Physiology, [...]

The Ph.D. treadmill is a long and intense ordeal of taking classes, helping teach classes, taking qualifying exams, doing research, proposing a thesis and then defending that thesis. All fairly well established and with clear requirements for continuing on to the next step. However, the need to produce and “’pass” was ever present. Michigan State [...]

Professor Sparks was excited. “Good, we finally have a clear difference of opinion here.” He continued quickly. “Joe, you did not think that the conclusions were supported by the data. What data would you personally want to see to support those conclusions?” I was on the spot and all alone on my opinion, but felt [...]

I was asked, or more precisely, ordered one semester, to do some lectures to the undergraduate physiology class on thermoregulation and thermogeneration in mammals. More simply stated, a series of lectures on how we keep warm. The senior lecturer for the class gave me some outline material and also the types of test questions that [...]

In graduate school I was taking classes with some incredibly bright students. There were two people who were veterinarians studying for Ph.Ds. and an MD/Ph.D. student as well as regular Ph.D. students. All of them were superstars in their undergraduate programs or even in their first doctorate degree. I say all of “them” because I [...]

 The more physiology I learned, the more I realized that I needed to learn a lot more physiology. I had a reasonable understanding of applied physiology between having worked on an ambulance to help pay for college and my experience as an athletic trainer, and my bachelor’s in chemistry gave me a solid foundation in [...]