Barbara Collins, who is leaving the classroom after 50 years of teaching microbiology and botany at California Lutheran University, has blazed some trails in hertime.

Over the years, leading field trips from local parks to New Zealand, Collins has earned a reputation for charging ahead on the trail, sometimes leaving her students breathlessly trying to catchup.

Collins also has been a trailblazer in her career, working full time as a professor while bringing up fivechildren.

"She's a force of nature," said David Marcey, a biology professor at CLU. "She's maintained an active role in teaching and in field studies, often outpacing her 19-year-old students up the mountain. ... She's reallyirreplaceable."

Collins, 83, has contracted an incurable, progressive lung infection that makes it difficult for her to breathe and left her weighing less than 90 pounds. She will retire this year, a decision she resisted but has reluctantlyaccepted.

"I could teach sitting down, but working in the lab, I wouldn't have the breath to go around and get the work done," she said. "At first, it was really hard, but after the last hospital visit, I realized I really couldn't do it. ... I don't know what the future is, but we just go ahead and do whatwecan."

Collins still shows up at her office most days, working on a project to identify trees and shrubs on campus. She's also planning on writing a book about living life in your80s.

That's typical of Collins.

(View the Trailblazing CLU biology professor slide show.)

When she was pregnant back in the 1960s, her department chairman said Collins would have to stop teaching. Collins would have none of it, telling the chairman that if her students had never seen a pregnant woman, it was about time they did. She went on to receive the President's Award for Teaching Excellence in2007.

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Trailblazing CLU biology professor leaving classroom after 50 years