Class Act: Jennifer Rabson relishes elements of both music & chemistry
There is more to Dr. Jennifer Rabson than meets the eye.
The assistant professor of chemistry at Amarillo College is not only a dedicated scientist, she is a versatile musician whose polished voice has long been integral to the Amarillo Master Chorale.
“She is a longtime alto in our group and a real joy to have,” said Dr. Nathan Fryml, AC’s director of choral activities and artistic director of the Amarillo Master Chorale. “She is greatly valued and bends over backwards to perform with us despite her very demanding academic schedule.”
Rabson has been enamored with music for a very long time, but when she had to choose one discipline for her livelihood, chemistry won out. But it was close.
In fact, teaching chemistry is how some years ago she subsidized her pursuit of a degree in music education at Alabama’s University of Montevallo; she often made two-hour round trips at night – cashing in on the doctoral degree she already possessed – to teach chemistry at an outlying community college.
“When other students of music were out leading community bands or whatever, I was teaching science classes at a community college because, after all, I was a self-supporting adult by then,” Rabson said.
“People ask me how chemistry and music mix and my usual answer is ‘they don’t.’ I just never liked putting all my eggs in one basket. While some people know they are right brained or left brained, I was always more down the middle.”
Rabson, who joined the AC science faculty in 2011, grew up in Tennessee and began studying piano in her youth. She played percussion in her high school band, and she successfully auditioned to attend the prestigious Tennessee
Governor’s School for the Arts, a month-long program with an emphasis on percussion that further immersed her into the world of musical performance.
However, she was forever encouraged by her father, a professor of engineering, to follow a STEM pathway in college. And truth be told, she was more than amenable to doing exactly that – at Houston’s highly challenging Rice University.
“I always enjoyed learning about science growing up,” she said, “so it was just a matter of deciding on which STEM field. I enjoyed chemistry the most of my introductory STEM courses at Rice, and so I decided to pursue that. And once I got to college I decided teaching was something I wanted to do.
“I will say,” she admits, “that getting that degree in chemistry at Rice was honestly one of the more challenging things I’ve ever done in my life.”
Perhaps the challenge was intensified by Rabson’s continued participation in music while at Rice; she was in the band’s drumline at all the football and basketball games, and she played in the jazz and concert bands there, too.
Upon graduation from Rice, Rabson spent the ensuing year conducting scientific research at the Baylor College of Medicine. She then enrolled in the Biochemistry Graduate Program at the University of Texas at Austin, earning a doctoral degree and setting her sights on teaching full time.
She landed her first job at Schreiner University in Kerrville, Texas, where she taught sciences aplenty yet also found time to make music – accompanying voice students on piano, performing in the university pep band, even playing percussion with the local symphony.
“During my four years there, I decided that I preferred teaching lower-level classes, that I enjoyed working with non-science majors just as much as with science majors, and, well, that I wished I could have been a music major.”
That’s the sentiment that led Rabson, with a hard-earned doctoral degree in tow, to swap her spectrometer for a metronome and follow her musical dream.
She enrolled first as a percussion major at UT–San Antonio, but switched to piano and voice transferred to the University of Montevallo. She supported her efforts there by making those long nightly drives to teach chemistry. In 2011, her music education degree finally in hand (she had even completed her student teaching for music), Rabson found herself at a proverbial crossroads.
“I was in my mid-30s and graduating from music school, and I realized teaching science was a huge part of who I was, that I would miss it when it was gone,” Rabson said. “I had never wanted to throw away that career. I just wanted to be one of the music professionals that I liked to hang out with, and still do.
“But back then, I had just gotten married and wanted to start a family. I loved my science, and I felt maybe learning a new career would not be such a good idea, especially at the same time as learning how to be a parent.”
So, the freshly minted music graduate began looking for a full-time job – teaching chemistry. She accepted an offer to teach at AC and has done so ever since.
“Amarillo College is a great place to work,” Rabson said. “So many people in the world mind getting up and going to work Monday morning, but I don’t mind at all – it’s a comfortable place to be, a place where I enjoy interacting with students.
“I see qualities that I much admire in a lot of my students,” she said. “They are very disciplined in their lives, so many having to schedule everything around full-time jobs and family obligations. They’re taking large loads and they handle it so well. I just love seeing what everyone brings to the table.”
Rabson knows chemistry is a challenging subject, so she strives to keep her students interested by adding plenty of interactive activities into the mix.
“I try to relate the coursework to the real world as much as possible,” she said. “I try to be kind and fair. We’re all human beings on this journey together.
“Some do think my classes are hard, but I feel like to be competitive with national standards – these are classes that transfer, after all – that there is a certain expectation and a lot to learn. But I want to be understanding of my students, be both a coach and a teacher, and never be discouraging.”
Rabson and her husband have a son who is 10 and a daughter age 7. Both kids are regular participants in AC’s Suzuki program, which provides individual and group instrumental lessons for children. Their mom sometimes accompanies them on the piano when they perform recitals. She also has played in various AC ensembles over the years, and in the AC Chamber Orchestra.
In addition to her regular participation in the Master Chorale, the transplanted Tennessean serves on the children’s council at Polk Street Methodist Church, where she also sings with the church choir.
“I chose to attend college in Texas to move at least a bit away from home,” Rabson said. “It turns out that I like Texas and want to stay a Texan the rest of my life.”
That right there is music to a lot of ears.