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Charles Creekmore
UMass Amherst magazine
Fall 2003
Do a Google search on Elaine Marieb ’69G, ’85G and you’ll come up with a whopping 3,640 results. And though the Google Counter is a good indication of Marieb’s status in cyberspace, it’s a virtual understatement compared to her prolific accomplishments in the real world.
Those Google references get at the basics of Marieb’s publishing career and the 13 textbooks she’s written in the field of human anatomy and physiology. However, by fleshing out this picture and doing an advanced search, one thing soon becomes clear: that Elaine Marieb is leaving her permanent mark as a biologist, nurse, teacher, writer and philanthropist.
One of Marieb’s rarest distinctions can’t be located anywhere on the Web. She is one of the few people on the face of the earth who ever did exactly what her father wanted her to do for a living. Well, in her fashion, at least, and a little belatedly.
When asked why she was originally drawn to education, Marieb answers in her tidy Yankee style. “I wasn’t. My father wanted me to be a teacher, but I said, ‘No way!’”
Nevertheless, after a false start studying chemistry, Marieb later went back to school and super-qualified herself for teaching. Her re-schooling eventually led to a B.S. from Westfield State College, an M.S. in biology from Mount Holyoke College, a Ph.D. in zoology from UMass Amherst, an R.N. from Fitchburg State College and an M.A. in nursing from UMass Amherst.
Not long after Marieb began her long career teaching anatomy and physiology at Holyoke Community College, the “No way factor” was neutralized by the “Aha quotient.”
“The thing I love most about teaching,” she says, “is the ‘Aha!’ You know. When a student finally gets it. For instance, when students first realize that the cell processes they are studying are carried out by each and every cell in the body.”
Marieb’s educational career is the antithesis of the old joke that “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” She was so focused on the “can-do” aspects of her own teaching that it soon branched out into nursing and writing careers. She studied nursing to strengthen her firsthand knowledge of medical anatomy and physiology, and she took up writing to perfect the kinds of text and lab books used in her classes.
What does it take to be a good textbook author? “Humility,” Marieb says, referring to the 20 to 40 reviewers who anatomize each draft.
One proof of Marieb’s teaching skills is her students’ appreciation, despite her exacting style.
“My reputation precedes me,” she says. “But I soon reach students and convince them I’m human. The first few classes, they sit there like they have rigor mortis. Then they loosen up. By second semester, they come back and tell me how much they appreciate my toughness and my demanding teaching method.”
Marieb also believes in giving back to the public institutions that have made her career possible. The latest of her many philanthropic efforts was funding the Elaine Nicpon Marieb Cell Biology Laboratory here on campus.
Throughout her many-sided career, Marieb has dissected the principle that “anatomy is destiny” and turned it inside out. In Marieb’s case, “destiny is anatomy.” Just to prove it, she is leaving us 13 anatomy and physiology books and 3,640 references on the Internet.
Oh. You can also put an asterisk next to those numbers, with an addendum that reads, “And still counting.”
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