Emma Guiberson

Professor Guiberson is really good at explaining the content she's teaching; she shows lots of examples to help you understand how to work through the problems. There is a decent amount of homework, but usually only one or two a week.

If you’ve ever stared at a metabolic map and seen only a tangle of arrows, take this class. Prof. Guiberson turns that tangle into a story about how cells decide, moment to moment, what to build, what to break down, and when to save energy for later. By the end of the semester, glycolysis, the TCA cycle, and fatty acid metabolism stop feeling like lists to memorize and start feeling like one connected, logical system. The real strength of the course is its focus on regulation. Instead of stopping at what each enzyme does, Prof. Guiberson keeps asking why the pathway is controlled the way it is. That means allosteric switches, hormonal signals like insulin and glucagon, and the tradeoffs a cell makes between fed and fasting states. That way of thinking sticks, and it’s exactly what you need for medicine or biochemical research. Prof. Guiberson is also a wonderful teacher. Lectures are clear, organized, and genuinely engaging, and she is approachable and patient whenever you’re stuck. The final group project is a highlight. My group built a trivia board game that pitted two teams against each other on glycolysis and its regulation. Teaching the material to classmates turned out to be the best way to learn it myself. The course moves quickly and demands steady work, but every hour pays off. Prof. Guiberson’s metabolism class is one of the most rewarding courses I’ve taken at Middlebury. I recommend it without reservation to anyone interested in biochemistry, medicine, or how life actually runs.

If you’ve ever stared at a metabolic map and seen only a tangle of arrows, take this class. Prof. Guiberson turns that tangle into a story about how cells decide, moment to moment, what to build, what to break down, and when to save energy for later. By the end of the semester, glycolysis, the TCA cycle, and fatty acid metabolism sto …Read more

To preface, chemistry is a more challenging subject for me than normally requires more hours for me to learn. Guiberson was very passionate and excited to teach gen chem but her style did not work well for me. Sometimes it felt like she was having a hard time explaining such simple concepts to people who did not yet understand them. She was very accommodating and wanted her students to succeed, but I found her lectures to be hard to understand. The exams were hard, and we had weekly quizzes along with weekly homework problems.

To preface, chemistry is a more challenging subject for me than normally requires more hours for me to learn. Guiberson was very passionate and excited to teach gen chem but her style did not work well for me. Sometimes it felt like she was having a hard time explaining such simple concepts to people who did not yet understand them. …Read more