When designing a tattoo, people put their trust in a skilled artist or trusted friend. Not everyone would put their trust in a group of first year college students.
That is exactly what assistant psychology professor Edward Chen did during his first year as a professor, collaborating with his students to create a piece of art that will forever be memorialized in skin and ink.
“It was my first semester as an adjunct professor at (Orange Coast College), and one girl in my class came up to me on the first day and asked ‘hey, can you be the adviser for our club?’” Chen said when beginning his story behind the tattoo.
The club was for those with an interest in developing user interface and user experience (shortened to UI/UX) aspects of websites and applications and interested in learning about design outside of a UX design class.
“I was surprised they wanted me to be their adviser, but I said yes obviously. So I became their adviser while I was co-advising another club for honors psychology students,” Chen said.
Ann Tran, the club president during the 2022 fall and 2023 spring semesters, was the one to ask Chen to be their new adviser.
“I had emailed all the computer science professors to be our adviser, but they either were too busy or already advising another club. So I asked all my professors and the first one to say yes was professor Chen,” Tran said.
Tran and another club member, Andrea Santos, began work on a project for their college’s annual student project and research symposium with Chen as their project adviser.
“He helped us a lot. We were also in his research class so we got the chance to practice our presentation before the actual symposium,” Tran said.
Combining their knowledge of user interface and design as well as Tran’s experience as a psychology student and Santos’ interest in graphic design, the pair designed an app meant to help students regulate and maintain a study schedule that works best for them.
The project was a proposal for the design and layout of the application called StudySesh, using methods they learned in their club activities as well as psychology and population research methods encouraged by Chen.
“Our project was based on helping students manage their studying habits and I guess just like the psychology of learning, he was a very hands-on adviser, we would meet every two weeks and talk about what we needed for the project and he helped us with our research” Santos said.
“I also enjoyed his class because he would take the time to go over special topics that weren’t covered in the textbook, like ADHD, which I really appreciated since I have ADHD,” Santos said.
When the pair presented their project at the 2023 symposium in April, they received second place in the oral presentation category and a $200 check.
Proud of his students’ work, Chen asked Tran, Santos, and some members of the club board if they would like to design a tattoo to commemorate his time with them at OCC, knowing he would be leaving for his new job at LBCC come the 2023 fall semester.
“I was really surprised that he wanted to get a tattoo to remember us. It was really sweet when he asked,” Santos – who designed the final version of the tattoo Chen would get, said. “We all got together to brainstorm ideas for his tattoo, we were all hanging out one day after a club meeting at this STEM center event they had on campus.”
Chen and his students eventually decided on a tattoo of Snoopy, a character from the
“Peanuts” comic and show.
“He has this catchphrase he said at the end of every class that was ‘do good science, be good people’ and I thought it would be a good idea to incorporate that in the tattoo design. I thought of my best friend too, who designs really sick tattoos and has done a bunch of Snoopy and Charlie Brown tattoos for people before,” Santos said.
Santos’ friend, Alex Purcer (cruncheycore on Instagram), was the one who ultimately tattooed Santos’ design on Chen.
“I love Snoopy and I think he’s super cute, so I thought it would be a really cute idea to have Snoopy with a bunch of books and glass to represent (Chen),with him saying ‘do good science, be good people’ in a little bubble,” Santos said.
The final design of the tattoo was tweaked from the speech bubble design to have the phrase written under a bespectacled Snoopy reading a book, with a pile of three more books next to him.
“When I tell students to ‘do good science’ and ‘be good people’ I just want to remind them to care about ethics and science and people,” Chen said.
“To make sure they’re treating their subjects with respect and kindness. I want them to do (research) correctly, because that research could be done in a fashion that does not accurately assess the issue and can lead to misinformation,” said Chen.
Chen was unsure of why his students all agreed to the design, but was happy to have found a design both he and his students thought was representative of his time as their professor and adviser.
“I think it was because I always wore this one Snoopy hoodie, with the words ‘majored in cool’ underneath it and it was something that stuck with them as something that was me,” Chen said.
“Maybe because I liked to read and they said, ‘I’m a huge nerd,’ it fit,” Chen said.
The books are also intentionally colored to represent the UI/UX club Chen advised and OCC, a blue and orange book to match the college’s spirit colors, purple to match the club’s logo and a green book in the same shade as the green used for Tran and Santos’ project logo.
At the beginning of his graduate program, Chen already knew he wanted to be a teacher. His only issue was he hadn’t decided what education level he wanted to teach.
It was only during his time in his graduate program at UCI, where he taught some classes to undergraduate students, that he realized he wanted to become a college professor.
“As social scientists, our goal is to improve the human condition. We want to help people, and teaching was how I realized I could help people,” Chen said.
Prior to starting as an adjunct professor at Orange Coast College, Chen already had three tattoos, both of which he got to commemorate milestones in his life, and wanted to include his students in this tradition by having them design a tattoo.
“I’ve actually been thinking of continuing the tradition now that I’m (at LBCC). But I might have to reserve it to just one semester per year, otherwise I’d have a lot of tattoos,” Chen said.
Chen’s passion for teaching stems outside of just wanting his students to learn and succeed. He stressed the importance of getting his students to think critically about the material they learn and challenging their own preconceptions of the sciences.
“When it comes to social science, (research findings) can be a little more murky. Whenever I tell students about scientific findings I tell them that it’s “as far as we know,” because it could turn out to be disproven or become outdated. Even the textbooks we use at times can be outdated,” Chen said.
In particular, Chen was passionate about the inconclusive evidence behind the ideas of learning styles and its application in educational settings.
“There is a lot of talk about learning styles and teaching different styles to optimize student learning. But the research behind it is mostly anecdotal, it lacks the empirical evidence to prove that different learning styles exist or that students succeed by studying using techniques meant for their learning style,” Chen said.
“Learning styles imply there’s only one method that each student learns best through. Which isn’t the case. A lot of the time it depends on the content and sometimes students have different interpretations of their learning style than others.”
“Think of it like this. How would you teach someone a dance? It would probably be visual, because even if someone is an auditory learner, listening to someone explain a dance is more difficult than watching them perform it,” said Chen.
Chen has talked at length to his students about the questionable research behind learning styles, but noted that some of his students have continued to apply the language of learning styles to themselves.
“It can be hard teaching nuance to people who are just starting out as scientists. If you believe something wholeheartedly, then it’s difficult to change your mind, even when faced with opposing evidence,” Chen said.