Meet KPU: Christian Lange

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Christian Lange is no stranger to the microscopic world.

With more than 15 years of research experience, he has devoted much of his career to understanding how viruses evolve and spread, particularly in the context of human activities. 

Recently, Lange published a study investigating how colonial land use has influenced the transmission of viruses like Ebola, providing insight on the intersection between environmental change and infectious diseases. 

Beyond his research, Lange is a biology instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. His zeal for education goes beyond textbooks and exams as he emphasizes real-world connections, motivating students to engage with biological concepts in meaningful ways. 

With a preference for face-face interactions, he values discussions that help students grasp complex concepts and ideas. Alongside teaching, he continues to mentor research students at KPU and analyze coronavirus datasets, contributing to the ongoing understanding of viral evolution.

When did you join the KPU community and why?

I started in 2022, while we were still a bit in a lockdown situation. I’d been working in the private sector before that, but around 2021, we were hitting a little bit of a low in new contracts. So I was looking for part-time teaching opportunities, and it just happened to be at that point KPU was looking for someone who had an expertise in genetics and cell biology. 

I applied and I was happy to find that the teaching philosophy that exists here very much aligns with what I’ve been looking forward to doing. I was teaching before, but there was often this push toward, “Oh, we’ll just evaluate, standardized with multiple choice questions.” And that was kind of a little bit unsatisfactory for me. 

What’s your favourite story of your time at KPU?

There’s no specific one event, but it’s more of a collection of small things that happen here and there in the classrooms. When I teach biology, whenever I find that students can connect these sometimes abstract concepts to things that they have experienced themselves or things that are relevant for their life, and they share stories, and we can discuss how this fits into what we’re learning at the moment, that’s something I get really excited to see. It’s like, “OK, we have a connection for the topic that helps understanding,” and it’s not just useless knowledge that you have to learn for a grade in a degree. 

What’s something you would like to say to people new to KPU?

For students, I would say enjoy the opportunities that you have because one of the great strengths that I see here is that we have a very good teacher-to-student ratio in our classes. So we as the instructors are relatively available. Most of us also care a lot about our students. Not to say that others don’t, but if you have 200 students in a classroom, you can’t care as much because you’re just overwhelmed. We have the time to actually do things, and that’s a really great thing. Most of the instructors here also enjoy teaching. That’s why we’re here. 

Another thing that I think is great is the support services that we have, not just for really difficult situations, but also generally. The Teaching and Learning Centre, which is available for free for every student, can help set folks up for success. I think that’s great. 

What are you working on or doing right now?

I’m always working on updating and upgrading my teaching materials and my plan for the next semester. But apart from that, I also do some research. I have some research student projects that I’m supervising on many different things, all related to infectious diseases. And one of the things that I’m working on right now are some coronavirus data sets for human coronaviruses and bat coronaviruses. We are looking at the genomes of these, the locations, and the hosts to see how we can use the existing data to learn more about the evolution, the distribution, and the dynamics of these viruses. 

What’s something you would like people to know about you?

Something that’s related to my work is that I’m a little bit old fashioned. I prefer to interact with people one-on-one or in a group setting rather than electronically. So if students have questions, I really love it if they come to my office hours or at least ask before or after class — although their time is always limited — rather than writing an email, because if I answer an email, that’s me assuming this question goes in a certain direction and I don’t know if I answered the question the person’s actually having. But if I talk to someone face to face, I can see if the answer I’m giving is useful or not. Then, I can change my answer without having to go back-and-forth and get frustrated. That’s something that I think is important for me.