Worms, ants, spiders — like most kids, Dr. Carly Tribull, Assistant Professor of Biology, grew up shooing them, stomping them, or swatting them away. It wasn’t until years later that she developed an interest in insects and, in effect, got bit by the entomology bug.
Today Tribull is not only a biology professor, but an entomologist who researches the predatory practices of parasitic wasps, the species that invade the bodies of other insects and breed their young inside them. While that sounds more like the plot of a horror movie, killer wasps are more than just the center of her professional world: they are also the subject of a comic book she drew in graduate school, entitled "Carly’s Adventures in Wasp Land: Nature’s Horror — Parasitoid Wasps."
Populated by anthropomorphic wasps who say things such as “Aw, shucks,” “Howdy,” “Who could possibly like us?” and finally, “I’m tired of feeling bad about what I am!” the comic is just one in a series in which Tribull is a character who teaches about wasps, the one element of the comic that is not far from reality.
Originally created for middle-school students, Tribull now draws biology comics for college students, handing out chapters as the semester progresses, with the intention of eventually assembling the content into an online textbook. She expects to complete this ambitious project in two years and make it available at no cost to students and educators worldwide.
The response from students has been positive, she said. “Educators have known for a while that designing a lecture topic as a narrative is very effective, and comics only solidify that approach.”
Though Tribull loathed insects and creepy crawlers growing up, she loved drawing other creatures — dinosaurs (she pursued paleontology at one time because of them), dragons, and other fantastical creatures. She studied art in high school in Florida and the subject ignited her comics career.
After earning her Ph.D. in 2015 at the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, Tribull taught for two years at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. But she yearned to return to New York, and selected Farmingdale because, she said, it is an “undergraduate, teaching-focused institution.”
She even thinks her use of comics as a teaching tool was a factor in FSC offering her the opportunity to join the faculty; prompting one to wonder how her comic books influenced those who interviewed her for the job of assistant professor. Tribull has a theory.
”I think the search committee was interested in any potential faculty who were interested in engaging with students in unique ways,” she said. “Since I’ve been here, people have been pretty supportive of the idea of comics as a viable teaching tool.”
Tribull also is passionate about bringing diversity into the field and classroom. One way she does that is to seek out and mentor non-traditional students. "I am working to mentor students who are underrepresented minorities in the STEM fields,” she added.
"I’m also particularly interested in mentoring women, first-generation college students, and other non-traditional college students," Tribull continued. "As a comic artist, I think about the diversity of my characters a lot — it’s easy to unconsciously fall into the trap of drawing people who look like you, and I want all of my students to be able to see themselves in these comics.”
Visit Biology Comics to learn more about Tribull’s free, comics-based textbook for high school and college biology students.
